Is it safe to eat hot dogs and cold cuts while pregnant?
Okay, do me a favour, don't Google "listeria and pregnancy." You will be rocking in the corner and you won't eat.
Here's the deal: Listeria monocytogenes is everywhere. It's in decaying vegetation, soil, animal feces, sewage and contaminated food. Cooking kills the bacteria. However, it can sneak into many ready-to-eat foods such as hot dogs and deli meats because contamination may occur after cooking and before packaging.
Now, even though listeria is everywhere, non-pregnant healthy adults are highly resistant to it. The reason pregnant woman are told to avoid potentially contaminated food is because they are about 20 times more likely to get listeriosis than other healthy adults (some say it's because they have a suppressed immune system). If left untreated, listeriosis can affect your pregnancy and, in rare cases, it can lead to miscarriage, premature birth and stillbirth.
Cooking food thoroughly will destroy this pathogen so boil that wiener, Honey! Steamy salami may not be as appealing, so you'll have to decide whether or not you want to walk on the wild side there.
The symptoms of listeriosis are often flu-like and can include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and a high fever. They usually appear within two to 30 days, but it can take up to 90 days to get sick after someone has eaten contaminated food. If you think you might have been infected, you can have a blood test and if the results are positive, you will most likely be given a course of antibiotics.
I'm not even going to get into nitrates and sodium here. There's all kinds of crap in delicious food that none of us should eat. We all know it's bad but it still tastes good, so whatever. You're pregnant, not stupid.
Oh, and if you decide to give up baloney but still want to help out on a farm during lambing season, you just whoa nelly. It seems that it's very easy to pick up listeriosis from newborn lambs. An interesting WTF fact that couldn't be ignored.
search: Um, I thought I told you not to search this?! Okay, I searched: listeria pregnancy, cold cuts pregnancy, deli meats pregnancy, luncheon meats pregnancy, listeriosis
15 Comments
Reader Comments (15)
So if you think luncheon meat is bad check out a book I'm ready called "Eating Animals" and learn about "where today's meat comes from". Shocking and very very disturbing on so many levels. I'd like to know who decided "Factory Farms" was OK ... sure wasn't the consumers. Summary:
* Baby chicks sensitive beaks clipped to avoid pecking each other to death because they are packed together 30 - 50 Thousand deep in one barn
* Chickens re-engineered to grow fast ie."breast heavy" so that they can't even stand but they usually can't anyway because they are in wire crates stacked so they're feet become deformed anyway
* Machine fed w/ soy, corn drug laced w/ antibiotics and weight gainers
* Virtually NO waste clean up - almost all chickens leave ff's for slaughter laced w/ e-coli and salmonella & if they don't have they get it in processing. Chicken meat receives up to 3 chlorine baths before it ever makes it to the counter
* And this just touches on chickens for slaughter for meat. Being an egg layer isn't much better.
* And then there is the life of a turkey. If you're born male it's arguable if they are the lucky one because they get sent to death (usually ground up alive). They only keep female turkeys. Turkey's can't repo sexually anymore and all females are inseminated for reproduction.
* I could go on in gory detail about the life of a Pigs, Cattle, Baby Cattle (aka "veal"), Lamb, Fish, etc.
Most of these animals are smarter than your domestic pets who everyone goes off their heads about when cruelty happens there. This is just morally and ethically wrong and I can't stop talking about it because as consumer feeding my young family I never realized this was going on. If you care at all about what you're feeding your families get educated about this. Buy local; in season; eat more vegebles and alternate sources of protein (there are MANY); cut back on consumption of meat (we've increased meat intake 3X in 20 yrs - thank you MacDonalds - ugh!) and source ethically raised, grass/grain feed, free run and ethically slaughtered meat; or go veg. We'll all be healthier for it!
Man this post makes me sad. I actually lost a little sleep last night. All I wanted was a hot dog. And dude.. I hate hot dogs. The hubby went out and got me some hot dogs and all the works and I ate 3. And after thinking "omg, I think hot dogs are on the do not eat list" I still really want one today. Stupid fetus. Lol
You know what, Manda, go for it. The big deal would be if you ate a contaminated hot dog that wasn't cooked enough to kill off the cooties. As for the nasty stuff that is also in hot dogs, yeah, well none of us should eat them but they taste delicious and I doubt if they are the only thing you are eating. Hit that craving like a ho and just roll with it. I'm sure a new craving will crop up soon enough.
i eat turkey and bacon almost daily.
this made me actually lol. i DID google "listeria and pregnancy" when i first found out and i really, REALLY freaked myself out. sometimes i think the internet should be issued warning labels. however, once i realized that it wouldn't be practical to live inside my house in a glass bubble for 9 months, and that people are born healthy all the time in places with no running water and covered in feces, i loosened up a little. finding out about the fine print (UNpasteurized) on the brie thing helped too :)
they say you cant eat to much tuna but i use to eat tuna every day on my salad wraps. What meat can i have on it now if i cant eat tuna or deli meats
There's no way I'm giving up my sandwiches, damnit.
Great blog. I've been avoiding deli meats my entire pregnancy (27 weeks this week!) thanks to some friends who freaked me out and convinced me I would miscarry! Well, this week, I wanted a turkey sandwich. I love turkey sandwiches. I live in Florida, and it's hot, and I'm due in June, so it got me thinking, how will I survive the summer without my turkey sandwiches?! Ha! I realized I will be completely miserable physically, so to deny me my favorite summer food would be ridiculous. Ditto what Kate T said!!!
Ditto what Natalie said* (thought it was Kate T's post...)
I am the mom of 2 year old twins. I was in the hospital several times during my pregnancy for pre-term labor. One stay, when I was 30 weeks, I had a 3 day stay, luckily they were able to stop the contractions. The point of that little story was that during my stay do you know what I was served for lunch... twice... Lunchmeat sandwiches! (Ham one day turkey the next.)
I had been so careful during the whole pregnancy to do everything 'perfect' denying myself of anything that was 'bad'.
My point is if the hospital is serving lunch meat to the pregnant women, how bad could it really be?
Sarah
We live in the southeastern US (hey, y'all) and I was informed by my doctor that as long as I didn't buy my deli meat from a butcher in a holler I was probably going to be fine. Which is good, because I'm really loving sandwiches right now...
i'm stationed in germany and all the germans give me in the hospital is deli meats... and THEIR deli meats are gross looking.. so if i can have gross looking deli meats, shouldn't I be able to eat the GOOD ones? IM just saying... This one i threw to the birds LOL
I love ham-applegate is probably the best in terms of how they treat their animals. I eat ham fried with eggs or in a panini. If its' heated, then that kills the listeria, right?
Remedying dog spots is not easy because grass has no defense mechanism, so it soaks up the excessive salts without knowing they are harmful. Because there is no evidence that changing the dog's diet will lessen the severity of the urine damage on the grass.
Wow, 'artificial grass' you really hit the nail on the head with that point. I'll never thing of cold cuts in the same way again.