Which Animal-based Foods to Avoid in Pregnancy
Pregnant mothers should stay careful about what they eat. Mothers need to get many vitamins, proteins, and nutrition during pregnancy. Animal products cover many essential components of these needs. But there are some animal products that pregnant mothers need to stay away from. Because those foods can harm their baby or risk pregnancy.
In this article, we are looking at which foods to avoid in pregnancy by focussing on animal-based ones. Let’s see these foods down here.
Raw Milk
Milk is among the essential nutrition sources with many benefits. But when it is raw, milk can cause many diseases. As raw milk does not offer any more nutrition than pasteurized milk, you should never risk your health by drinking unpasteurized milk or eating dairy products and desserts made with unpasteurized milk. The pasteurization process cleans the bacteria in the milk and makes it safe to consume, even in pregnancy. But raw milk is placed on top among animal-based foods to avoid in pregnancy.
Undercooked Foods To Avoid in Pregnancy
Although many people love rare cooked steak or cold hotdogs, eating meat without cooking them well can be dangerous. Meat can contain many bacteria and parasites. As your system is more vulnerable during pregnancy, you can easily get sick after eating meat with these bacteria or parasites in it. These foreign factors can also pass to the baby. So, you should avoid undercooked meat products like deli meats during pregnancy and cook your meat well enough to kill any bacteria and parasites in it.
Undercooked poultry
Like meat, poultry can carry many parasites and dangerous bacteria, as well. When the poultry meals are not cooked well enough, they have a high risk of poisoning you. This risk is especially high when the product is not fresh. And it can cause painful illnesses. During pregnancy, such problems can risk the baby’s life too. So, non-fresh or undercooked poultry are animal-based foods to avoid in pregnancy as well.
Processed Foods To Avoid in Pregnancy
Many of the animal-based packaged products that you can buy from the markets, such as cured meat, hotdog, pre-cooked meats, dry milk, or some cheese types, are processed with various methods to preserve them longer on the shelf. Nitrate-based preservatives are quite common in this kind of process. While nitrate can extend the product’s shelf-life, it also can become nitrosamines under certain conditions. Nitrosamines are direct links to many health issues such as cancer risk and problems with the development of unborn babies. So, to be safer, you should avoid animal-based foods that are processed with nitrites.
Egg Without Cooking Well
Eggs can contain many bacteria that can put your health at risk. If you get such bacteria during your pregnancy, your illness can affect your baby’s development too. To make eggs safer to eat, you can make sure that they are always cooked very well, and avoid eating raw or undercooked egg meals like poached or scrambled eggs. Homemade cake icing, homemade mayonnaise, and similar products are also animal-based foods to avoid in pregnancy since they contain raw eggs.
Some Cheese Types Foods To Avoid in Pregnancy
Although dairy products that are made in the US are required to be pasteurized, this may not apply to imported cheese. Unpasteurized cheese can contain various bacteria that can put your health at risk, especially during pregnancy. However, this doesn’t mean that you should avoid all imported cheese. Since the hard cheese types like swiss or cheddar do not contain much water, they do not have much bacteria in them. Soft cheese types like blue cheese, feta, brie, panela, gorgonzola, queso fresco, or camembert can contain much more bacteria. So you may be safer if you see them as animal-based foods to avoid during pregnancy.
Fish with mercury
Eating fish helps us get a high amount of omega-3 and protein, besides many other nutrients. However, Larger fish species that eat other smaller fish contain high volumes of mercury in their bodies. Mercury, in high doses, can harm your body in many ways. So, you should take large fish like swordfish or shark as animal-based foods to avoid in pregnancy. You can eat low mercury fish kinds like canned tuna, cod, catfish, and salmon. But you should keep this consumption under two or three meals a week.
Shellfish Foods To Avoid in Pregnancy
Shellfish kinds, like clams, mussels, or oysters, can carry many dangerous bacteria and sea viruses. They can also easily cause food poisoning when they are not fresh or undercooked too. To make it safer, you may only buy the freshest shellfish and cook them very well without the shells. But if you avoid shellfish in general during pregnancy, it would be for the best.
Non-fresh seafood
In some places, finding fresh seafood all year can be difficult. In such places, seafood can be stored in freezers for a long time or stored as smoked. Both methods allow some very dangerous bacteria to produce in these foods. These bacteria are especially dangerous during pregnancy since the immune system is weaker, and you can get sick easier. If you get infected by such bacteria, you can even have a miscarriage. So, Non-fresh seafood is a dangerous one of animal-based foods to avoid in pregnancy.
Poluted water fish
When ordering or buying seafood, the origin of it is important in some cases. Especially for freshwater fish, you should consider the source that the fish has come from. Freshwater sources can be polluted by nearby industries. By eating fish from such polluted, you would risk your baby’s health and development. To make sure, you may want to count fish kinds like salmon, pike, walleye, bluefish, trout, and striped bass within the animal-based foods to avoid in pregnancy, at least when you are not sure about the cleanliness of their source.
