Can I eat cheese while pregnant?
I think every pregnant woman should be issued a taser and a wheel of brie.
The taser for people who ask "Haven't you had that baby yet?!" and the wheel of brie because, hey, when can you consume about 800 calories in one sitting and be able to blame any weight on another person?
Listeria is the big worry. Listeriosis is a severe bacterial infection caused by Listeria monocytogenes and can be found naturally in soil, decaying vegetation, and in the intestinal tract of most mammals. Foods that can be contaminated by it include cole slaw, hot dogs, deli meats, chicken, and non-pasteurized dairy products.
Center of Disease Control claims that pregnant women are 20 times more likely to become infected than non-pregnant healthy adults. When someone ingests contaminated food, L. monocytogenes gets into the bloodstream and spreads to other organs, including the placenta. It's nasty. You don't want it and if you read the articles on listeria you will be amazed that any of us made it here considering how common it is and how deadly it can be.
Where you lose me is the connection to soft cheese – such as brie or camembert, and blue-veined cheeses, like danish blue and stilton.
Unpasteurized cheeses and the sale and consumption of raw dairy products are severely restricted in North America. Since 1949, the US government has forbidden the sale of cheeses made from unpasteurized milk unless the cheese is aged at least 60 days (the idea being that after 60 days the acids and salt in the cheese will kill off any harmful bacteria). So you're actually hard pressed to find any soft cheese that isn't pasteurized these days.
Check the packaging or ask if the cheese is pasteurized. If it is, take the maternity waistband for a test drive and roll out the cheese wheel darlin'. Be sure to taser anyone that comes near it.
search: soft cheese pregnancy, unpasteurized cheeses, listeria pregnancy
8 Comments
Reader Comments (8)
I have happily craved brie throughout my pregnancy. For a record-setting SIX times, my husband has lovingly prepared a wheel of brie, surrounded by buttered puff pastry, cranberries and slivered almonds, and baked to perfection. I have usually eaten the ENTIRE thing myself in one sitting, but have been known to share once or twice. YUMMY!!!!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for this one! I was so freaked out about this during my first pregnancy that I avoided soft cheeses until my husband, a chef and well trained in food safety, told me that you would have to work REALLY hard to find unpasteurized cheese in America. Even the mexican, and mediterranean restaurants have to use pasteurized (the imported cheeses have to be pasteurized to come to the US). Some woman the other day tried to tell me I was damaging my baby's brain by eating soft cheese! READ UP people!
YES- thank you. I stopped eating soft cheese for the first couple of months of pregnancy until my doctor said I would be fine with anything pasteurized. When I heard this it was like a religious moment, because every label I looked at said pasteurized. Even bluecheese!! I live in NYC where there are some funky cheese shops and I am not buying there at the moment but all the Whole Foods and other grocery stores have plenty of options. I'm so much happier... now if there was just a safe alcohol for pregnancy. No that's fine I will wait to deliver until I have some wine with my cheese.
What a great site! It's such a relief to find an online community where topics are researched and discussed intelligently. I adore soft cheese (and sushi!) and decided to forgo both during my first two pregnancies and yes, tears were involved. Really!
I'm two months in to my third pregnancy and am sooo looking forward to the next time we have a wine & cheese night! I'll be settling for a non-alcoholic wine :)
oh, thank you! we're working on getting pregnant and i'll be honest - this was a BIG fear for me! i don't think i can go a whole week without some chevre or feta, so the idea of NINE MONTHS was honestly freaking me out! i knew it was only unpasteurized cheeses, but i didn't realize how uncommon those were. thank you thank you THANK YOU for saving my wife from a cheeseless me!
Woohooo! Thank you sooo much for this info! I am getting married next month and I ordered a 'cheese wedding cake' before I was pregnant, I was absolutely gutted to think that I would't be able to eat it, but after a quick check with the company I have discovered that all the cheeses used are pasteurised! I am so happy, look out brie - here I come!!!
THANK GOD. Seriously, I've already had to give up wine, beer and gin & tonics (especially painful for the summer), and the Pregnant Lady Haters out there want me to give up soft cheese, too? Are you trying to kill me????
I adore your site. Bless you and the fingers you type with.
Absolutely almost all cheese you're going to find in an American grocery store is pasteurized, EXCEPT do watch out for gourmet-imported-raw-organic local farmer's market and specialty store stuff. You will on rare occasion find unpasteurized cheese there. I am a gournet cheese-aholic snob and figured this out pretty quick. Thanks for spreading the word and hopefully squelching some completely unfounded fear-mongering out there.