Cold Meats

Although with the first pg the 1st dr i said did say Listeria is big here in Dubai as people don't wash the salad (in restaurants) properly and she advised me if we eat out, eat veggies that have been freshly cooked. It's not listeria I'm worried about when it comes to restaurant/ hotel salads, but amoebic dysentery! DD was diagnosed with it last autumn and the Dr said never to touch any salad from restaurants and hotels... and that it's surprisingly frequent here in Dubai, mainly because of poor hygiene and people (carriers) not washing hands after wiping bottoms. Fortunately it's easily treatable when you finally realise you've got it, but reading up on it on Wikipedia is horrible!

Heinz salad cream fine, bought mayo uses pasterised eggs so fine, homemade mayo and restaurant mayo = no-go Humus controversial, but better it be homemade, anything like that can be dodgy depending on how long it has been sitting around. I did avoid it when pregnant unless I made it fresh at home. Oh Thanks Kiwi for the clarification!! I love love Heinz salad cream:))) good u told me about the humus as i am going for Iftar thingy today! thanks for the heads up:)))

Heinz salad cream fine, bought mayo uses pasterised eggs so fine, homemade mayo and restaurant mayo = no-go Humus controversial, but better it be homemade, anything like that can be dodgy depending on how long it has been sitting around. I did avoid it when pregnant unless I made it fresh at home.

Ok so you stay away from cold cuts, unpasteurized cheeses, yogurts, ice creams etc and salad from outside, right? am i missing something here??? I have a question though, what about humus, moutabel and Mayo esp Heinz salad cream:)))

u need to wrap ureself up in coton wool and not eat anything incase it harms u when ure pregnant... it all gets abit carried away these days to when i was pregnant with my first 10 years ago...

In the UK i was never advised to stop eating cold meat, pre-pack salads best not to but if you do wash thoroughly, no no for soft cheese & peanuts. ive been craving ham rolls with branston sweet onion pickle sauce - yummy lol, they say you're allowed to eat peanuts again now, it just about requires a PhD to wade through all the do's and don'ts in pregnancy these days.

The food thing is a bit of a headache, I CRAVED licorice at one point, and ate half a bag, and then was informed of a study which said pregnant women shouldn't eat too much licorice. Baby-kiwi survived though ;) It's funny though how some things get completely hyped beyond reason (considering the actual likelihood) and other things are hardly mentioned. I remember having toothache early on with DD and thought, since I'd been told that dentist can't do fillings during pregnancy, that I'd use the great natural clove oil trick to numb the pain. Thankfully the pharmacist asked me if I was pg, because it turns out it's such a strong uterine stimulant that it can actually bring on your period, or make you miscarry! Most of the herb-based natural oils are (rosemary, clove, sage...) I also craved lovely healthy fruit and ate easily 500g+ each day, thinking that there were far worse things to be piling through... unfortunately, because of the pregnancy doing I-don't-know-what to my teeth, I ended up with 3 cavities!

I think (and total disclaimer because I'm not sure) that it is something to do with your immune system being lower when pregnant so that you don't "reject" your baby? I also remember hearing that you can be barely ill, and your baby quite effected, and you're right, most people wouldn't go to a Dr for this (even if pregnant tbh) so you'd assume not all cases would be reported, but I guess its based on people who get sick enough to report it/be hospitalised. It is still pretty low risk, but good to be aware, we get loads of pamphlets handed out to us when pregnant in NZ, not sure what happens in the UK, def nothing given to me here in Doha. People can be too literal though, we get advised "no salad unless you made it yourself", which obviously actually means "no salad unless you can be sure its well washed and freshly made", but I've had friends who wouldn't eat a salad I had made for them, even though I was also pregnant and so obviously taking ultimate precautions, because they hadn't made it "themselves" :(, I was happy to eat my mum's salad though. also good to know that most jars of mayonnaise are made from pasteurised eggs, so you can enjoy them on your salad, its just that lovely homemade aioli that you can't have, unless you find pasteurised eggs. The food thing is a bit of a headache, I CRAVED licorice at one point, and ate half a bag, and then was informed of a study which said pregnant women shouldn't eat too much licorice. Baby-kiwi survived though ;)

In the UK i was never advised to stop eating cold meat, pre-pack salads best not to but if you do wash thoroughly, no no for soft cheese & peanuts. ive been craving ham rolls with branston sweet onion pickle sauce - yummy

gosh, well I stand corrected (seems to be happening a lot recently - I might have to learn to hold my tongue!). Really strange though because unless it's changed in the last 2 years, these food guidelines aren't being communicated properly to women (OK, me, in particular) in the UK. Also... and I wonder if the results are slightly skewed in that most not-pregnant people probably wouldn't go to the Dr because of a bit of a gyppy tummy - they would put it down to "something they ate" and ride it out (and so they would be unaware that it was listeriosis), whereas a pg woman would be far more worried about anything health-wise and would be more likely to go to the Dr for even a gyppy tummy, and would therefore be more likely to be officially diagnosed. It's academic really, but hey.

Aha, I knew I had read that risk was greater when prego ;) [i'>In the United States, an estimated 1,600 persons become seriously ill with listeriosis each year. Of these, 260 die. The following groups are at increased risk: Pregnant women: Pregnant women are about 20 times more likely than other healthy adults to get listeriosis. About one in six (17%) cases of listeriosis occurs during pregnancy. Newborns: Newborns suffer the most serious effects of infection in pregnancy. Persons with weakened immune systems from transplants or certain diseases, therapies, or medications. Persons with cancer, diabetes, alcoholism, liver or kidney disease. Persons with AIDS: They are almost 300 times more likely to get listeriosis than people with normal immune systems.[/i'> Older adults Healthy children and adults occasionally get infected with Listeria, but they rarely become seriously ill.

blown the page, ok just figured that out, hope have fixed it This from UK research [i'>Listeriosis is a rare but severe food-borne disease, caused by infection with listeria bacteria. It mainly affects the elderly and those with weakened immune systems, but can also pose a significant risk to pregnant women, their unborn babies and newborns. Early symptoms may include a self-limiting flu-like illness and an upset stomach, but the infection can cause more severe illness such as septicaemia or meningitis and can lead to abortion and stillbirth in unborn babies. Uncomplicated listeriosis can be treated effectively with antibiotics. Between 2001 [u'>and 2008 there were 1510 cases of listeriosis, 181 of which were in pregnant women. Of these, almost 40 per cent (66 individuals out of 181) were women from an ethnic minority which was established from the first and surname of the patient. The proportion of pregnant women with listeriosis from an ethnic minority increased from less than a quarter of the cases in 2001 to over half of the cases in 2008, with the greatest increase being from 2006-8. This increase was over and above what could be expected given changes in the population structure of England and Wales during this time. Dr Iain Gillespie, Head of Listeria Surveillance at the HPA said: "During pregnancy women are advised to avoid certain foods that may be contaminated with listeria. These include undercooked ready meals, soft cheeses, cold cuts of meat and pâtés. This HPA study suggests that these food safety messages may not be reaching, or may not be heeded by, all pregnant women, particularly those from ethnic minorities. "It is important that all pregnant women know what foods should be avoided for the sake of their own health and that of their babies, so food safety messages for preventing listeriosis in pregnancy may need to be targeted more clearly to those that appear to be more at risk, including women from ethnic minority groups."[/u'>[/i'> I think the risk to you might be the same when pregnant, although as I understand it you are more vulunerable when pregnant, but obviously its the risk to your fetus (including obviously-death) that we worry about, it makes sense to me to therefore avoid foods that pose the biggest risk but its not a matter of anything being "banned" it is of course up to you whatever risks you take when pregnant, nobody is legislating it. edited by kiwispiers on 21/08/2011 <em>edited by kiwispiers on 21/08/2011</em>

Yeah we're actually told soft cheese is fine if pasteurized and freshly opened/out of fridge, but I think in France it tends not to be pasteurized (they are by law in NZ). I think no ham or raw egg products is also for for salmonella, I don't eat pork anyway but was very pleased when I discovered you could buy pasteurized eggs. :) You have to balance it all against the fact that you should be eating healthy food (chips might not be a listeria risk but salad is prob a better choice for your unborn child)and the risks are reasonably low but I think I looked it up when I was pregnant and it was soemthing like one in 30,000 per pop so not unheard of. Its a bit like how caffeine increases your risk of miscarriage but plenty of my friends still happily drank tea and coffee thoughout while I chose not to and their babies survived ;). [url=http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2010PressReleases/100805Listeriadeprivationandpregancyrisk/'>link[/url'> you've blown the page with your link, hun! Cheese that's sold commercially is pasteurised, even in France. Supermarkets will still sell the direct-from-the-producer stuff, but it's clearly marked. To be honest, you can get food poisoning from pretty much any kind of food and we'd never touch anything ever again if we knew all the nasties that we could get... but we don't and the risk of food poisoning is just the same when you're pregnant than when you're not... it's just that the consequences for the unborn child *may* be more severe than for the adult (although for normal food poisoning where you get the gyppy tummy, bubs doesn't get that!)

Yeah we're actually told soft cheese is fine if pasteurized and freshly opened/out of fridge, but I think in France it tends not to be pasteurized (they are by law in NZ). I think no ham or raw egg products is also for for salmonella, I don't eat pork anyway but was very pleased when I discovered you could buy pasteurized eggs. :) You have to balance it all against the fact that you should be eating healthy food (chips might not be a listeria risk but salad is prob a better choice for your unborn child)and the risks are reasonably low but I think I looked it up when I was pregnant and it was soemthing like one in 30,000 per pop so not unheard of. Its a bit like how caffeine increases your risk of miscarriage but plenty of my friends still happily drank tea and coffee thoughout while I chose not to and their babies survived ;). [url=http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2010PressReleases/100805Listeriadeprivationandpregancyrisk/'>link to listeria advice UK[/url'> <em>edited by kiwispiers on 21/08/2011</em>

Yep def no ham, Hehe - I can't get over this! We're not given the "no ham" advice in the UK at all for listeria, just no soft cheeses, unpasteurised stuff and then no pate or liver products for the vit A content (and then the usual list of shell-fish, sushi, alcohol...). Funnily enough, pre-packed salads aren't on the list, even though I think I read somewhere that most cases of listeria in the UK in recent years were due to salad and not cheese, milk... or ham. In fact, I think there have only been a handful of cases in the last 20 years and none of them involving pregnant women. I was chatting to a French friend when I was first pg about the "banned" list and about whether or not it was an over-reaction and she smiled and said "could you imagine if they banned pregnant women from eating camenbert and brie in France?! Never going to happen!" [by the way, those soft cheeses are now made with pasteurised milk'>

ooopssss, im on my 3rd preganancy and have always eaten ham cold meats and pre packed salad.....and soft cheeses....

Yep def no ham, no prepackaged salads in general, and the worst for listeria is actually cold rice, so no cold rice salads. (this was very awkward when staying with MIL and I swear she went out of her way to make every meal something on my "forbidden" list :( If we were eating leftover cold meat at home, I would just nuke it to steaming in the microwave first, and then let it quickly cool down in the fridge, listeria is unlikely to develop in a matter of minutes. The risk of listeria is very very low anyway, and back in the day (and in many cultures now) women just eat as normal, but of course you'd hate to be that one in a million or whatever it is where things didn't work out. Just have a listeria laden , raw egg mayo covered sandwich the second bubs is out!

Hi Ladies, I have a brochure here given to me by my GP. It is by a Aust and NZ body for Food standards. These are the foods to avoid and safer options (after the = sign) with regard to Listeria. I have been craving cold meats too, so if I must have a toastie with turkey I will grill/cook the cold meat first. Deli meats= [b'>safer [/b'>to eat home cooked meats, you can cook and serve cold within 1 day Cold cooked chicken from shops= home cooked and use within a day Pate Salads from shops or salad bars= home made, wash everything Chilled seafood= freshly cooked seafood Semi soft and soft cheeses= hard cheeses, processed spreads, cream cheese, cottage cheese Soft serve ice cream or unpasteurised dairy= frozen packaged ice cream, all pasteurised dairy HTH!

Hi Aussie Pup! I ate deli meats during pregnancy, but I made sure to microwave for a minute or steam them first (which is ok as the heat should kill the listeria). The taste isn't to dramatically altered, and it is a way to help satisfy those pesky cravings. http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/listeria.html Hope this helps!

Hun, yeah I was also told avoid deli meats. But towards the second half of my pregnancy when I relaxed a little I did packaged ham. :D

Isn't it just deli meats? So salami, hot dogs etc? I didn't eat any cold meats during my pregnancy until we went home to NZ on holiday and I was craving a ham salad roll from our local bakery! DS arrived safely :)

that's an unusual recommendation! No ham?! We were told to avoid pate and the like (so liver sausage, etc...) because liver in particular contains large amounts of vitamin A (I think) which can be harmful to certain points of bub's development. Aside from that would be the ever-present risk of food poisoning, but as long as you take the usual precautions and steer clear of anything that you feel isn't right (instinct to the rescue!), then I'm sure you'll be fine.