Читать книгу Blooming Birth: How to get the pregnancy and birth you want - Lucy Atkins - Страница 30

It’s all horribly confusing. Can you eat that kind of cheese, or not? Can you drink that glass of wine, or not? One recent survey of British women by a baby formula manufacturer⁷ found that most of us don’t fully understand which foods to avoid when pregnant. Indeed, we often cut out foods that are beneficial, in the mistaken belief that they are somehow dangerous. Cottage cheese, for instance, is a good, low fat source of calcium. But many women avoid it in pregnancy thinking it’s a ‘soft’ cheese, therefore verboten.

Our paranoia is understandable. For a start, the goalposts keep changing. When I was pregnant for the first time I stuffed myself with tuna, which I’d been told was an excellent source of fatty acids, protein and vitamins. Five years later, pregnant with number three, I was only allowed a couple of medium-sized cans a week. In the interim, studies had found that tuna may contain too much mercury and so harm a baby’s developing nervous system if you eat too much of it in pregnancy (see guidelines). Swordfish, marlin and shark are now officially out, for the same reasons. And some reports have recently suggested that farmed salmon may contain unacceptable levels of toxins, though the Food Standards Agency says the benefits of eating salmon outweigh any potential harm as salmon is a fantastic source of protein, vitamin D and good fats that can help your baby grow. (If you’re really worried you could try buying organic or wild salmon instead of cutting it out.)

There is, among all this confusion, some sensible evidence that certain foods should indeed be avoided during pregnancy. Mostly they are the ones that carry a very small risk of food poisoning such as listeria or salmonella, which studies have found may damage your fetus or cause miscarriage. Apart from this relatively short list of foods (see Pregnancy Eating Crib Sheet below), most doctors say you should eat basically as normal during pregnancy.