goats cheese

[Rinnyx]

I have read sites that say yes, others say big fat no, what is your view?

I'm only asking cause we have out 20 week scan friday and are off out in the evening to celebrate and me being me have already picked what I want, its only pizza express but I really want the pizza with Goats cheese on it then the next day I am off to lunch with some friends and picked out a dish with grilled goat?s cheese.

Should be fine right? its not like I am eating it everyday for 9 months, whats wrong with 1 little treat

Agreed. It's kind of like alcohol - I very very rarely drink alcohol now I'm pregnant and at most it's never more than a spritzer or a low alcohol cider, in otherwords never more than 1 unit at a time. But all alcohol sold in the UK has the ridiclous picture of a pregnant woman on the back with a line through it - like pregnant women are banned from drinking this! Please! If you're only have one or two units A MONTH then surely you don't need any more guilt heaped on top of you.

I'm already off the coffee, unpasteurised cheeses, parma ham, smoked salmon, rare steaks - a lot of things i really enjoy in other words. surely a very tiny bit of any of the above very rarely is unlikely to do you any extreme harm, but I definitely do feel guilty about it if I have any of the forbidden foods...

Isn't that just basic food hygiene, though? How is the advice different for pregnant women than it is for people in general there? And like I say, what about the meals that aren't designed to be cooked and piping hot?

[aha - in fact, I've just checked NHS advice on this - and yup, it says don't eat 'prepared', by which I guess they mean 'shop bought'? (although surely food is 'prepared' in a restaurant too?), potato salad and coleslaw. So that's those nice little M&S pasta/feta/sundried tomato meals out, then... - www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/917.aspx?CategoryID=54&SubCategoryID=130. Although it says 'some' prepared salads... not 'all'....and then doesn't tell us what the criteria are for Danger Salads...Nice and clear, then.]

I do find the 'some midwives/some baby books' stuff SO frustrating. Someone posted about this on another thread here recently - their midwife giving them the standard advice about tins of tuna per week, then undermining it by saying she thought (why?) that that was too high an allowance, and personally she thought pregnant women should go for less. That's not helpful.

sorry Japhrimel, I'm not having a go here, it's just baffling. As that Zoe williams article says, no wonder pregnant women end up either neurotic or throwing caution to the wind. I don't want to do either, but I can understand it. (also sorry OP, didn't mean to hi-jack thread).

Argh - my tardy reply was to Japhrimel on ready meals, in case it makes no sense.

hi there, I'm new to mumsnet and I'm due in January...eeek! My issue with the food guidelines is that I'm vegetarian but the only non-vegetarian product I seem to be able to tolerate is tuna. Every week I've been having one serving of tuna, usually on a Friday (my tuna day!) so as not to go overboard, but I find myself craving it more than once a week, like on a Monday say etc. I tried salmon but I don't like the taste as much and I feel more comfortable with tuna. My midwife said only one small can per week, but I read the Canadian guidelines it says 3 - 4 servings per week (1/2 cup in American measurements), which is much more than one small can.
Is tuna sold in Canada sourced from a less mercury polluted place?? I have no idea!
Does anyone have any advice?

while I'm at it I totally love goat's cheese, but have refrained, but I'm desperate to have some as cheese is such a good source of goodness for me being veggie!

Chrissy - given where tuna is fished from, do the Canadians have different oceans from everyone else? Perhaps when their boats exit the Hudson Bay they pass through a portal in to an alternative world - I'm thinking "Deadliest Catch" meets "Stargate"?

Out of curiosity, why are you more "comfortable" with tuna than salmon? IMO, intensive tuna fishing is possible the most disturbing thing I've ever watched on TV.

How are you handling your addiction to shark and marlin?

Chrissy83, even if you follow the guidelines v strictly, you can still have the goat's cheese that doesn't have a rind - i.e. the hard stuff or the soft kind that comes in little logs. That's my understanding anyway.

There was a very interesting feature on alcohol in pregnancy on Woman's Hour yesterday, in which an academic raised the issue of creating panic around uncertainty - i.e. over-strict guidelines encourage pg women to see everything even slightly potentially risky (like goat's cheese) as dangerous. She saw it as part of a culture in which we see everything unknown as dangerous. For pg women, it means that the risks are everywhere - don't drink even a tiny bit of alcohol, don't eat a huge list of foods, don't use chemicals in your moisturiser... The idea being that to have the 'best' pregnancy you must avoid every potential risk, and if you want to take a risk, then on your own head be it, reckless woman!

Sorry for hijack, but I think it's a really interesting issue that tells us a lot about our attitudes to health and risk in general.

hehe yes i know what you mean, it doesn't make sense the the guidelines are different!

Actually when I say I'm more comfortable with tuna, I don't mean the way it's fished - that's truly awful and I dislike myself every time I crave tuna - but I just am more comfortable with the taste, perhaps because I grew up as a child eating it a lot, before I realised it was dead fish.

I think fish are the most beautiful things and could kick myself for liking tuna, but the taste comforts me and makes me feel like I've got some good protein, and I crave it for whatever reason.

Well enjoy it then! I really love a bit of pacific salmon (so cheap!) - I'll dress it up in a Thai broth or something and if you cook it up a little longer than is suggested it doesn't have that 'greasiness' that salmon can sometimes have.

that's a really good point, pidgin, and I think that there are way too many guidelines that encourage people to be obsessive about it. In my first 10 weeks i was obsessive, for example I switched from being a black coffee drinker to drinking peppermint tea, to cutting out all caffeine, tuna, goats cheese, ready meals, anything that I thought might be a risk, but it got me down. Now it's like, okay if I want to have a diet coke I can have one, as long as I don't trash my water intake and I have to make sure that keeps up to the level it should be at.

I don't want to spend all of my pregnancy worrying (though there are lifestyle changes to be made, for example I stopped on the black coffee!) as life is too short and there has to be some moderation.

I'm reading the book Wild Swans at the moment, in which one of the characters walks across the hills of China whilst pregnant with very little food or nourishment. It made me think, what the heck did people do before 'guidelines' told us what to do??

Common sense? Avoided the aforementioned wedding buffets?

Amazing really, that for every "crack baby" born there are 10000 women who didn't eat feckin' cheese.

haha I didn't even think about buffets! that's opened up a can of worms! I went on a conference for two days last week and stuffed myself full of buffet!

Well as long as your conference buffet wasn't served under a marquee on an August saturday afternoon I'm pretty sure you'll be OK.

Yes, it's definitely baffling, I totally understand that. I think that if you understand the risks and are happy with them, then eat something.

It's people not being aware of the risks that is worrying - just because one person eats brie throughout pregnancy and is fine, doesn't mean everyone will be. In the same vein, one person's story of surviving an epic journey of hardships whilst pregnant (and having a healthy baby at the other end) isn't really helpful, because probably more than half of women who had to go through that would have had miscarriages. I wouldn't be happy at being told my risk of miscarriage was 50%! In the days before any guidelines at all (when there was also less skilled medical care available) far more babies and women died during pregnancy.

I always come back to: if you're happy with the risk:benefit ratio then eat or do whatever it is, whether it's goats cheese or antibiotics.

I love chevre goat's cheese, but find it easy to avoid (I have feta instead at home). So for me the benefits of eating it are minimal, therefore any risk at all makes for a poor risk-benefit ratio.

Eating fruit and salads on the other hand has definite benefits, so I'm happier to have some risk with eating that, because the risk-benefit ratio is still good IMO.

Not eating at all at an event (wedding, conference) has definite, immediate risks (I'll faint!). So the benefits of eating from a buffet in those circumstances are clear and I'd probably just try to avoid anything more risky (e.g. chicken or seafood dishes).

Lol at Chrissy83's tale - fwiw, peppermint tea also has some risks as it's a great smooth muscle relaxant (and the uterus is a smooth muscle!). You'd have to drink a lot of it, but it's ironic that you thought you were avoiding all risks in drinking it.

Life is risky. We gotta deal with that somehow.

it seems everything has risks! you're right, weighing up the risk and using common sense is helpful

Chrissy83 - Ooh I read Wild Swans a couple of years ago, kind of a misery fest but really engrossing at the same time. It does make you think about women around the world - I mean there's no way women in the third world are all getting access to clean drinking water, let alone pre-natal vitamins. And as for special pillows to help you sleep and prevent you from rolling on to your back? I doubt it! And obviously a lot of them do go on to have perfectly healthy babies so aren't all these guidelines starting to turn us all into neurotic messes where we feel like if any pregnancy complications arise we will automatically be blamed because we had a diet coke/tuna sandwich/tiny piece of goats cheese/glass of wine (whatever your poison of choice is!)

Thread seems to be meandering off topic (sorry OP!) but it's a really interesting issue. How many people's DPs have given up all these things entirely? Very few I'd wager and it's their baby too!!

lol actually my husb doesn't have as many vices (caffeine, tuna, goats cheese) as me, so he's been okay with it, but he does eat meat which I don't and it often makes me wonder if I should be, just when I'm pregnant.

guidelines can be helpful but they can put you under so much pressure to be 'perfect'. I wasn't perfect before I got pregnant and I'm pretty sure I won't be a totally perfect mother, so I won't want to pressurise myself into perfection right now either.

However, my sister had a baby a while ago and she is pretty perfect with adhering to guidelines etc all the time, so I do have someone very strict to compare myself to!

OH crap... I have avoided goats cheese with rind and didn't realise about bagged sald, so have been eating it (without washing again) throughout, practically every day....

I am now 26+2 and the baby is kicking and stuff - all scans fine... I probably haven't had listeria, have I...? Arrrgh!

Its like a new panic every day!!!

I don't think the NHS leaflets etc tell you to avoid bagged salad though... which is odd if its so high risk.

I will check with my MW when I see her next week..... another paranoid question for her to tell me not to worry about (I hope!)

No more bagged salads (sigh), but maybe chevre blanc (yay!!!).

Seriously, this is a minefield!

Oh, and in France, I know they don't say avoid blue cheese etc, but according to a friend, they seem to have blood tests all the time, all the way through pregnancy for toxoplasmosis, listeria (I think) etc etc... so maybe they go for cure rather than prevention there?

legallyblond - as posted earlier in the thread:

"Get it without noticing it? If I got listeriosis, the national papers would know about it. It would be the third outbreak that has occurred in this country in the past 20 years. "

Without wishing to be a total pedant, there are different kinds of listeriosis/ listeria; a few hundred people every year get listeria (fairly mild symptoms):
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/31369.php

But invasive listeriosis (i.e. the nasty kind which spreads to blood/ nervous system) is very rare:
www.nhs.uk/conditions/listeriosis/Pages/Introduction.aspx

The bottom line is, you'd know if you had either kind of listeria - and if you feel fine, you are fine!

Oh and Chrissy, I am veggie too - I found that, even when "morning" (hah!) sickness was at its worst, I could tolerate grilled halloumi (my supermartket sells pasturised - or "extreme heat treated", which I think is the same), yoghurt and hummous for protein. As the morning sickness eased, I have had pretty much all pasturised cheese (inc pasturised goats cheese etc), quorn mince etc and pulses (they made me sooo bloated in the early weeks!). i totally went off fish in the first few weeks, but have recently been able to bear the thought of it again! (I eat fish even though I am veggie... not strictly veggie according to some!)

Thanks legallyblond, I have a couple veggie pregnancy books which have helped, though I constantly worried in the early weeks about not having enough protein.

I love quorn mince! I make a potato, veg and quorn mince stew using veg stock and pasta sauce for the liquid part, it's heavenly.

Pidgin and skihorse - I know rationally that I would have been aware if I had it! I honestly find that being pregnant makes me so skittish about the most stupid things, even though I am normally really quite rational!

Totally agree with all of the above re guidelines and making some things seem "dangerous" etc etc. In fact, our society does that about food generally, not just for pregnant women.

There are, of course, some man-made things (trans fats!) that are actually not good for us, but the idea that some natural, whole products, like "fats" of "carbs" are somehow intrinsically bad is insane - and is why as a nation we eat so badly! If we all just ate (as much as we wanted) of normal, unprocessed foods, I am sure (totally unqualified to say this of course! ) that we would all be much healthier and have far less "issues" with food. Why do we insist on making the fuel we need for life into something so laden with "good" and "bad"?

The fact that the guidelines are so unclear for pregnancy is just the icing on the cake - my Mum calls it "listeria hysteria"!

I agree with you legallyblond, food shouldn't have a moral tag attached to it (unless it's unfairly obtained, of course!), so shouldn't be called 'good' or 'bad'.

This is actually a really interesting thread, and lots of good points made about our attitude to risk and our own personal risk/benefit analysis.

I think it would be helpful to be able to find out really clearly which of these risks are 'theoretical' risks and which are actual risk. What I mean is that if the risk of having listeria during pregnancy is 1 in 20,000, what does that mean in terms of what has happened over the last 10 years. How many pregnancies have actually miscarried, or how many babies have suffered developmentally because of it? I know these would be upsetting things to know, but I think they would also be useful, and help us to develop our own perspective on risk.

It is so hard to feel like you are doing your best for the baby whilst not becoming more neurotic than necessary - I mean there are actual real honest to god risks and then there are very slim theoretical risks - 'it could happen but never has yet'. Any help we could get in distinguishing between the two would be really helpful and meaningful for people going through this.

D