We’ve all heard about the dangers of Listeria, supposedly lurking in every single piece of cold food that you didn’t prepare by hand, yourself. No soft cheeses, no restaurant salads, no uncooked egg based sauces, no ham, salami or other deli meats and certainly certainly no sushi.
Today I made sushi using smoked salmon and I enjoyed every single mouthful of it. The benefit to eating something that I felt like eating, for me, far outweighed the minuscule risks associated with eating a cold prepared food.
Listeria is a food poisoning. It isn’t a bacteria that is present in all cold food – no, it’s food poisoning that can potentially grow in cold prepared food and is killed by heating. You’ve probably got more chance of contracting salmonella than contracting listeria on any given day.
And yet, I find that as soon as I’m pregnant, there is this Listeria Hysteria that surrounds every mouthful of food I eat. Does that contain ham? Has that lettuce been washed and stored properly? Is that egg cooked through entirely?
I’m just a little bit sick of it. Especially considering if you’re hospitalised during your pregnancy, the hospital sends you up commercially prepared ham salad sandwiches for lunch anyway and the midwives don’t bat an eyelid.
Pregnant women seem to become public property. Everyone suddenly has a say in what we’re putting into our bodies and it’s getting a bit ridiculous. I’ve already given up a lot of things in order for this pregnancy to progress safely, I don’t particularly feel like giving up all cold foods too.
My baby might die from listeria – but also, I might get hit by a car tomorrow. Or a truck might crash into my bedroom. Or I might fall down a flight of stairs.
I don’t think it’s about being frightened, so much as it’s about being risk aware. If I prepare sushi at home, using ingredients I trust, in a clean environment, then my chances of listeria are probably smaller than my chances of contracting salmonella, or breaking my nose walking into a wall (very real possibility).
This is my fourth pregnancy and hopefully our third baby. Any number of things could go wrong yet. My chances of pre-term labour are higher than normal, my pelvis might fall apart, I might dislocate a hip and end up hospitalised. I might get an infection (again) and land in hospital for a week (again).
Anything could happen, but provided I am careful, I am doubtful that it is going to contain listeria.
I stayed away from sushi places throughout my pregnancy but I made it several times at home! I knew that it was prepared in a clean environment and I enjoyed eating it.
If you worry about every bit of food and where is has come from and how it has been washed/prepared/stored etc, you’ll drive yourself mental for nine months!
It is a risk, but like you said, you could also fall down a flight of stairs or get hit by a car (I wish neither upon you of course!).
Yes, I’d be less inclined to buy sushi, but making it for me, seemed like a safe option.
I did spend a fair bit of time panicking during my first pregnancy, but like you said, I drove myself mad. I ended up just being careful and everything worked out.
I think life is about being risk aware, hey?
Definitely. If people are given the information, then I think educated choices can be made.
Yus.
Pregnant women should have access to good information. I agree with that. They will then make their own decisions about what to eat or not eat based on their own evaluation of risk and balancing the competing considerations (food aversions / digestibility is a real big one!)
At the end of the day I doubt you exposed anyone to anything with your smoked salmon, but it doesn’t matter what I think or anyone else – Your body. Your pregnancy. YOUR CHOICE.
To quote a blog post I wrote a while back: I am my body and I own my body and in my body I live, EVEN when I’m pregnant. By all means, tell me if you think there is a danger in certain behaviours, to me or my fetus. But then I will make the choices, and they may not be choices you like or understand, and you will almost certainly never know the range of reasons that lie behind my decision.
(PS I hope it was delicious 🙂
I love your comment, really.
Access to information about Listeria is the big one. The information I found on Gov health websites was far more moderate than the information I was given by midwives during Amy’s pregnancy.
Oh my goodness YES! When I spoke with my obgyn last pregnancy he really put it in perspective. The number of cases of listeria in the general public is miniscule and though pregnancy makes you higher risk it’s still just a ridiculous beat up. Gah! Go you and the sushi!
That was the info I hunted down before I wrote this post – trying to work out how common listeria actually was. Being pregnant raises my risk levels, yes, but apparently chemotherapy, AIDS, steroids and various other things would raise my risk levels just as much and I don’t recall anyone telling my grandmother to avoid soft cheeses during her Cancer journey.
YES.
I followed a chicks blog years ago, and when she got pregnant (after infertility) .. she loudly would proclaim all the shit she was doing that was frowned upon. Blog post titles included “I am going to a sushi bar today!” It was awesome … and as she pointed out, it was to an incredibly reputable sushi place that she’d been going to for years. And you can’t tell me pregnant Japanese chicks don’t eat sushi.
I ate peanut butter and runny eggs all through my pregnancy with Rocco – had NO idea they were frowned upon. Imagine all the shit our mothers ate, back in the day before all this information overload?
I spent a fortnight eating very little except peanut butter sandwiches (no crusts) and soft eggs on bread, because that is all I could stomach. Peanuts and eggs are some of the worlds best foods.
There is a reputable sushi place I would happily eat at pregnant, and then there are three or four sushi bars I wouldn’t go near (mostly because of salmonella, not listeria), so I concur with the blogger!
I looked into the actual figures behind the Listeria Hysteria when I was pregnant with Squiggle and here in Western Australia, there is one reported case of listeria in pregnancy every TWO years.
So essentially, that’s a 1 in 4 million chance of catching it.
I ate ham. I ate sushi. I ate salad and chicken and seafood from restaurants. I drank smoothies and tea. I ate Brie & Camembert (albeit coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried with plum sauce). Hell – I ate goggly-running soft-boiled eggs with toast-soldiers every day for the first 16wks of my pregnancy to avoid morning-sickness – as long as I had that egg before I got out of bed, I felt fine until dinner-time. Then it was time for another egg 🙂
There’s a higher possibility of attending an emergency room with an injury caused by pyjamas! (Seriously – there’s a statistic for sleepwear induced injury. It’s a 1 in 900,000 chance)
Oh your comment made me laugh. Sleepwear related injury is probably not awesome for those suffering it (super wedgies?) but it made me laugh.
Making it would definitely be safer. I also think that there are times when you have to pick your battles. I mean, you’re struggling to eat a lot, so your need to eat well might outweigh the listeria risk at the moment
Yes, I think it’s about being careful and aware of the risks, while taking as much care to minimise those risks.
So does that mean that if you eat salami or prosciutto that’s been cooked on a pizza, the listeria has been killed?
SOOOOO much to learn before I get pregnant – it’s quite overwhelming actually. I don’t know how I’ll cope if I can’t eat things like soft-boiled eggs, prosciutto and sushi. 🙁
Yes, heat kills it – if it’s there in the first place! As for eating these foods cold, as everyone above has said, the risk is one that you need to weigh with other factors and make your own judgement call about it.
I’m really quite grateful to be reading this blog and all the comments! I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do or eat anything pleasurable for 9 months. 🙂 I think I’ll be trying to do what a lot of other people have said – use a bit of common sense, eat at reputable places or prepare things at home and not worry too much about that one in a million chance of getting sick. 🙂
I am really pleased we could do that for you. I avoided nearly everything during my first pregnancy and was a) miserable and b) incredibly sick anyway – in my mind, if pregnancy is going to make me unwell, I’m going to do my best to limit the miserable parts!!
My sister is really, really stressed about this during pregnancy, she’s always on edge. I’ve found that even when it’s me that’s pregnant she gets panicky. I am careful when I’m up the duff but not so that it rules my life. Like you, I choose to prepare things myself if they could be more risky but most of all I just use common sense. You’re being smart about it all and the last thing you need is extra stress. xxxxx
I’m quite insanely happy to be reading this.
You’ve chosen sensibility and risk aware over hysteria and food avoidance.
Here’s a remote possibility I’ll toss your way. By NOT avoiding every little risky food, you may find you won’t get quite so sick? Well, that’s what I’m hoping anyway. No-one should be nauseous for 9 months straight.
I think every mother has one of those flashback moments of people going crazy over what they were eating.
My best memory was sitting down to a seafood plate at a restaurant, opening mussles up and suddenly having the room erupt is screeches while Nathan dived across me to grab the mussel shell from my hand.
This resulted in an angry, pregnant woman and a room full of people high-fiving themselves over saving my unborn child.
Ok, maybe that was a bit exaggerated, but it did happen and at that point there was nothing I wanted more than a nice, cooked mussel.
Everything in life is risky, as you said. We hop into those death traps we call ‘cars’ every single day and don’t bat an eyelid!
I had gestational diabetes so I was careful about what I ate so that I could ensure my blood glucose levels didn’t get out of control. Listeria was the furthest thing from my mind. I ate my deli meat sandwiches (AND LOVED THEM) and all that really mattered to me was that it was served on whole wheat! I also ate goat cheese, canned tuna, shrimp (tons), and fruit that was already prepped in the grocery store. As far as I’m concerned, society expects pregnant women to walk around in plastic bubbles and that’s just unrealistic to me. I took my prenatal vitamin every day, I never drank, I never smoked, and I never did drugs. I never got any type of food poisoning and both of my babies were born healthy.
I was very worried about listeria with my first pregnancy, less with my second and now with my third I eat what I want, when I want. My doctor didn’t seem to fussed with it when we discussed it during our first appointment together after finding out I was expecting.
I have more of a deal with it if it happens approach to life rather than worrying about things that may never happen.
Hope all goes well with the rest of your pregnancy. 🙂
I was doing some research on the soft cheeses thing, turns out it is when the milk is unpasteurised there is a risk – and by law all milk in Aus must be pasteurised. So go for it, eat that yummy camembert too, I am.
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