Salad dressing

[Anonymous]

FWIW, I'm pregnant with my first and am a member of the moderation school of thought. The reasons for me are simple: many, many of the things that are 'forbidden' to American pregnant women are consumed freely thoughout the rest of the developed world. And, newsflash, most European and Japanese women manage to give birth to healthy babies just like American women. My doctor went over all the 'no's with me and when I told her some of that sounded ridiculous, she told me to feel free to do my own research and make decisions I was comfortable with. So that's what I've done.

What, by the way, is wrong with eating bacon? I hadn't heard that one before.

[Anonymous]

I think that all those in the "moderation camp" have been very blessed in having healthy babies and uneventful pregnancies. Others of us have had slightly different experiences. I was a happy go lucky pregnant women until 4 months when things started to go wrong. I ended up spending 4 months in hospital fighting both for mine and my babies' lives. We lost one of the babies but thank God the other survived though was delivered early by emergency c-s. We spent 1 month in NICU and apart from our anxiety, we saw so many mothers pass through and leave without their babies and I cannot tell you how painful losing a baby is especially so close to term.

With that experience I will NEVER knowingly do anything that has a chance of harming my unborn child. Call me melodramatic, neurotic, uptight - whatever name you like - it is just not worth it. As one of the PPs said, after the baby many will deny themselves the very foods they are advocating here in order to lose the baby weight. Go figure.

[Anonymous]

One more vote for moderation! I used to hit the crack pipe everyday. Now that I'm pregnant I try to stick to once a week, twice if there's something good on TV. I want to have a healthy baby but there are limits, people!

[Anonymous]

Now THAT was hilarious.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and the crazy peanut butter lady--it was over the nuts. Again, had never had a reaction in four years, no one in hte family had a problem, there was no inkling that anything could go wrong, but MY GOD IT COULD.

Needless to say, those notveryfun playdates were curtailed in a mighty hurry.

[Anonymous]

My baby was in the NICU and many of these posts make me so sad. Everyone needs to make their own choices but I just don't get the desire to flaunt and take pride in engaging risks that you can easily avoid. I also ran into many moms who didn't get to go home with their babies. Its easy to take a healthy pregnancy for granted when you have no idea what you could have experienced.

[Anonymous]

I am very sorry for the PPs whose babies were in the NICU, but were the complications caused by eating salad dressing? Many of the foods that are characterized as risky here are not considered risky elsewhere. If you were to move to Spain where pregnant women are advised not to eat salad (any raw greens!) b/c of the risk of bacteria, would you stop eating salad? Would you still follow the American rules? It just frustrates me when people go on about something as risky without understanding the magnitude or character of the risk, if any. I don't see why pregnant women should be any less questioning when pregnant than we would otherwise be.

[Anonymous]

For all of the people who have decided to disregard the advise of the health care professionals - and follow the everything in moderation school of thought - how would you feel if you had a child born with a disability? medical condition?

we live in a society where it is everyone else's fault that our children are not perfect - let's sue the hospital, dr, etc but when it comes time for our our behavior, it is OK not to follow the medical guidance provided by our health care professionals.

[Anonymous]

The concept of moderation doesn't apply to a lot of these examples. It's not that a little bit of listeriosis is OK it's just that shouldn't consume listeria everyday. It's that you could eat unheated cold cuts (as an example) 100 times and only get listeriosis once (or not at all). You're taking a gamble and it's a gamble you (and your baby) are going to win most of the time. Personally I don't think anything on the banned list is worth the gamble.

For some of the examples here (caffeine, fish), the concept of moderation does apply, but no one knows where the line should be drawn. Almost all fish is contaminated with mercury. Mercury is a neurotoxin. How much of a neurotoxin is OK for your baby? Do you know? Does your baby book know? Does your doctor know? Will two servings a week be fine but three servings cause a neural disorder?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
For some of the examples here (caffeine, fish), the concept of moderation does apply, but no one knows where the line should be drawn. Almost all fish is contaminated with mercury. Mercury is a neurotoxin. How much of a neurotoxin is OK for your baby? Do you know? Does your baby book know? Does your doctor know? Will two servings a week be fine but three servings cause a neural disorder?

The problem is that many recommendations keep changing as new research emerges. For example, the lastest studies in reputable journals seem to show that cutting down on fish is associated with lower children's IQ (see link below).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17185324/

Personally, I ate more fish than the official guidelines suggested during my pregancy just because I don't like other types of meat (also, I am European and not so hung up on all these silly restrictions).

[Anonymous]

Congratulations on being European and therefore not having 'silly' restrictions on neurotoxins.

The article you cite presents the study as 'contradictory' to American restrictions but it is not. The Lancet found (and you're right it's a very reputable journal) that fish consumption is linked to higher IQs. That's likely because certain omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, have been found to be important to brain development. And those omega-3s are found in very high levels in cold-water fish. My point is that there is a calculated risk and no one knows exactly what the cut-off point is. If you think the "recommendations keep changing" then I'd think that would make you more cautious, not more uninhibited.

[Anonymous]

Okay, so let me get this straight. So according to the "moderation is evil" camp, you should do nothing that carries any risk of hurting anyone, correct?

Your chances of getting into a car accident are much, much greater than that of getting listerosis, so driving: that's out.

Your chances of falling down are much greater than getting mercury poisoning, so walking: okay, that's out.

Okay, ridiculous examples, I know, but come on people. Actually, having an occasional spot of wine, which relaxes you (and is recommended after certain procedures, such as amnio), and by being a relaxed, calm mother--instead of going through life paranoid about what could possibly though most likely statistically won't happen--is actually better for you and your baby. Endorphins = good. Stress = bad.

I'm actually going to put it out there that NO ONE on this forum had a miscarriage from listerosis (mainly because the chances of that happening are literally 1 in a million--for moderate hotdog eaters, it would be one in 842,800. And that's not the deadly kind of literosis--that would be one in 4,214,000).

My doctor has told me to act as I normally do, to listen to my body, eat whatever I want, have a glass of wine when I feel like it, just to relax about it. Your doctor has told you something different. So let's all stop with the tsktsk-ing and realize that babies have been birthed for millions of years, and in that time, the rules change of what you should and should not do, oh, every 8 minutes or so.

And realized that our mothers all birthed us with a cigarette in one hand and a bourbon in the other, and most of us turned out a-ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am very sorry for the PPs whose babies were in the NICU, but were the complications caused by eating salad dressing? Many of the foods that are characterized as risky here are not considered risky elsewhere. If you were to move to Spain where pregnant women are advised not to eat salad (any raw greens!) b/c of the risk of bacteria, would you stop eating salad? Would you still follow the American rules? It just frustrates me when people go on about something as risky without understanding the magnitude or character of the risk, if any. I don't see why pregnant women should be any less questioning when pregnant than we would otherwise be.

I am one of the PPs whose DC was in NICU. The point is not whether the issues were caused by eating salad. It is that when you come face to face with the fragility of human life you take it less for granted. When you witness one of your children suffering or worse from an allergic reaction you are less likely to call a mother who in a panic stops her child from eating a peanut butter sandwich uptight. One of the conditions I suffered from occurs in 1 in 1 million pregnancies - how's that for a small risk? Probably much smaller than the risk of getting a bacterial infection or salmonella from salads but it still happened to me. The magnitude of the risk is immaterial when it happens to you – you don’t say “its okay because it was such a small chance and its about time someone proved the statistic anyhow”. I sincerely hope none of you have to face anything so dreadful as losing your child or having a sick child and the odds are very much in your favor but remember that statistics are not much of an encouragement when you are that statistic. Furthermore, 9 months of your life, or even more if you have more kids, is not really that long. You are only giving up certain types of food (some of which are not that great for you anyway) - food you will willingly give up to lose weight.

Of course I am not trying to change your mind about what you should eat when you are pregnant – that’s entirely up to you. However just be a little more understanding when others – for whatever reason take a different stance.

By the way I also had my baby in the UK and there are dietary restrictions there too. I can't think of one thing on the restricted list here that was not on the list in the UK. In fact pregnant women are advised not to eat nuts which to my knowledge is not restricted in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am very sorry for the PPs whose babies were in the NICU, but were the complications caused by eating salad dressing? Many of the foods that are characterized as risky here are not considered risky elsewhere. If you were to move to Spain where pregnant women are advised not to eat salad (any raw greens!) b/c of the risk of bacteria, would you stop eating salad? Would you still follow the American rules? It just frustrates me when people go on about something as risky without understanding the magnitude or character of the risk, if any. I don't see why pregnant women should be any less questioning when pregnant than we would otherwise be.

I am one of the PPs whose DC was in NICU. The point is not whether the issues were caused by eating salad. It is that when you come face to face with the fragility of human life you take it less for granted. When you witness one of your children suffering or worse from an allergic reaction you are less likely to call a mother who in a panic stops her child from eating a peanut butter sandwich uptight. One of the conditions I suffered from occurs in 1 in 1 million pregnancies - how's that for a small risk? Probably much smaller than the risk of getting a bacterial infection or salmonella from salads but it still happened to me. The magnitude of the risk is immaterial when it happens to you – you don’t say “its okay because it was such a small chance and its about time someone proved the statistic anyhow”. I sincerely hope none of you have to face anything so dreadful as losing your child or having a sick child and the odds are very much in your favor but remember that statistics are not much of an encouragement when you are that statistic. Furthermore, 9 months of your life, or even more if you have more kids, is not really that long. You are only giving up certain types of food (some of which are not that great for you anyway) - food you will willingly give up to lose weight.

Of course I am not trying to change your mind about what you should eat when you are pregnant – that’s entirely up to you. However just be a little more understanding when others – for whatever reason take a different stance.

By the way I also had my baby in the UK and there are dietary restrictions there too. I can't think of one thing on the restricted list here that was not on the list in the UK. In fact pregnant women are advised not to eat nuts which to my knowledge is not restricted in the US.

PP, I am sorry for your ordeal. It sound horrendous.... may I ask, just out of curiousity, what happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am very sorry for the PPs whose babies were in the NICU, but were the complications caused by eating salad dressing? Many of the foods that are characterized as risky here are not considered risky elsewhere. If you were to move to Spain where pregnant women are advised not to eat salad (any raw greens!) b/c of the risk of bacteria, would you stop eating salad? Would you still follow the American rules? It just frustrates me when people go on about something as risky without understanding the magnitude or character of the risk, if any. I don't see why pregnant women should be any less questioning when pregnant than we would otherwise be.

I am one of the PPs whose DC was in NICU. The point is not whether the issues were caused by eating salad. It is that when you come face to face with the fragility of human life you take it less for granted. When you witness one of your children suffering or worse from an allergic reaction you are less likely to call a mother who in a panic stops her child from eating a peanut butter sandwich uptight. One of the conditions I suffered from occurs in 1 in 1 million pregnancies - how's that for a small risk? Probably much smaller than the risk of getting a bacterial infection or salmonella from salads but it still happened to me. The magnitude of the risk is immaterial when it happens to you – you don’t say “its okay because it was such a small chance and its about time someone proved the statistic anyhow”. I sincerely hope none of you have to face anything so dreadful as losing your child or having a sick child and the odds are very much in your favor but remember that statistics are not much of an encouragement when you are that statistic. Furthermore, 9 months of your life, or even more if you have more kids, is not really that long. You are only giving up certain types of food (some of which are not that great for you anyway) - food you will willingly give up to lose weight.

Of course I am not trying to change your mind about what you should eat when you are pregnant – that’s entirely up to you. However just be a little more understanding when others – for whatever reason take a different stance.

By the way I also had my baby in the UK and there are dietary restrictions there too. I can't think of one thing on the restricted list here that was not on the list in the UK. In fact pregnant women are advised not to eat nuts which to my knowledge is not restricted in the US.

I am the PP quoted in the quote. Actually, the point I was making was exactly that the unfortunate situation in which you found yourself was not because of any food you consumed. I have not called anyone uptight, I haven't judged. Human life is fragile, women who have had children in the NICU are not the only ones privy to that information. I think I have been very understanding of others positions, I don't criticize others for choosing not to eat whatever they chose not to eat. My point, and I believe the point of many others in the "moderation camp," is that many of the commonly cited "risks" are overblown, scientifically unsupported, constantly changing, not workd-wide, etc. Whether some of these things are even risks varies from one doctor's office to another in DC.

Your last sentence only goes to make my point. Do you think that American pregnant women who eat nuts are putting their babies at risk? What about eating salad?

And with regards to the recurring argument about food I am willing to give up to lose weight, I just find it silly. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't give up any particular foods to lose weight, instead I eat less and exercise more.