What To Eat While Pregnant: Food Guide And Cheat Sheet
04How can I protect myself from listeria during pregnancy?
Pregnant women also need to be very cautious of food-borne illnesses, and there are numerous sources: raw or undercooked seafood, raw meats and eggs, non-dried deli meats, undercooked hot dogs, refrigerated pâtés and meat spreads, raw sprouts, soft and semi-soft cheeses, unpasteurized juice and cider, unpasteurized honey and unwashed raw fruit and vegetables.
Food-borne illnesses can be more dangerous when you’re pregnant, because the immune system has to downregulate in order to host the fetus, says Phillipson-Webb. If pregnant women are exposed to the listeria bacteria, they are 20 times more likely than other healthy adults to develop listeriosis.
Heather Lovelace, a registered dietitian who sets the nutritional practice standards for care of women and children at BC Women’s Hospital and BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, notes that even if the mother’s symptoms are mild, some food-borne illnesses can cross the placenta and infect the baby.
The onset of mild listeriosis, for example, can happen about three days after exposure, or, for the more serious version of the illness, up to 70 days after. (The symptoms are flu-like: fever, headache, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.) This can lead to a miscarriage in the first trimester, stillbirth or a sick newborn.
