Can I eat these?

[Lulu]

Well if you pregnant before the 90's you could eat whatever you want!

[Astrid]

Thanks guys!!!

What about if say I did get a burger like a chicken burger or a fillet o fish (yum) what about the sauce it has on it? Would that be a creamy whole egg mayo? Or shouldnt I worry about little things like that! I want a fillet o fish! WITH the sauce! lol.

I doubt a fast food outlet would be using good quality whole egg mayo. Have a look at their website, there should be ingredient listings for all their products.

[Skyeblue]

Thanks Astrid, I went to the wesite and DAMN the sauce on the fillet o fish has egg yolks in it!

[tan32]

Oh i am addicted to Pav at the moment , every trip to the supermarket ends with a pav. Woolworths has them in a little tub so they are like enough for 2 people, hmmmmmmmm me and bub that counts for 2 people right.

[satya]

Most of what you've listed is fine except for mayo and salad not prepared within your own home.

I've seen 5 doctors during this pregnancy and they've all said no mayo due to the raw egg content - store bought or home made. Some of them also mentioned creamy dressings in general so that rules out all "white" sauces or dressings the take away places serve on their burgers. They also all said no salad unless you know it's been thoroughly washed - and how can you know that?

The thing that I found shocking about listeria when I got educated about it from a leaflet from the midwife clinic at my hossy is that it can live in your body for up to 70 days and you probably wont even know you have it.

The symptoms include flu like symptoms and sometimes urinary tract infection symptoms, very rarely the usual runs & vomiting that you get if you have "bad" food. That's why you don't tend to know if you have it.

If it crosses the placenta it can cause m/c, ruptured membranes, pre term labour and stillbirth. It is very rare in Australia but 70 or so cases are reported each year so it is still a real risk.

Apparently they only discovered that it could be passed on to us through the food chain in the 80's which explains why all our mothers and grandmothers think we are being ridiculous when we avoid the "risky" foods - they simply didn't know about it back then.

[feeb]

Listeria can actually lead to speticemia (blood poisoning) meningitis (brain infection) which can cause misscarriage or still birth. Other people who are at risk are newborns, cancer patients, AIDS patients, elderly and any one who is immuno suppressed.

[Astrid]

I do think it is up to each of us to way up those risks of what we eat, when I asked some trusted medical friends what the actual risk was, I decided not to bother avoiding foods unless my gut was telling me to. The stress of what to eat or not to eat was not good for me. My gut has been quite good at warning me so far, managed to avoid a bad case of food poisoning due to it, amazing what your body can detect from meters away if you listen to it.

[feeb]

Astrid I aggree as a midwife i educate woman about listeria and foods to watch out for, but to be honest I still have most of the foods on the list if I want but i am selective at where i will buy it from.

Some peopke go way over the top and become psycoticly obbsessed with what they will and wont eat.

You wouldnt eat something normally if it smelt off or tasted funny so why should pregnancy be any different!

[Astrid]

I really wish the risks were outlined with data, like other things we are warned about, so we can make informed decisions. Just a blanket "Don't eat", to me, is really not helpful. I suppose I am a numbers person and like to see "there is a 1 in 100 risk of....".

[satya]

I personally don't care how low the risk is - and it does appear to be quite low if only 70 people get it here each year. With having already suffered 3 unexplained losses I'm not taking any unnecessary risks whatsover. I can live without all the "risky" food for 9 months. I'd hate to turn out to be one of those 70 odd people who do get it.

[Indadhanu]

Food risks... another one of those personal choice things... a lot like having an amnio or CVS for example. There's a risk with that but so many choose to have it anyway.

I do think there's a lot of scaremongering pregnant woman... The final straw for me was the report that said pregnant woman shouldn't be near the city and if they live near busy roads that they should shut their houses up because otherwise xyz will happen. Basically we can't even breathe!!!!! Apparently vitamin C causes cancer now, what a riot! A well manipulated study can show anything, so I generally ignore and just listen to my body.