Pregnancy in the U.S. Has Become Grounds for Serious Food Neuroses

Eating during pregnancy should be fun. After all, we're allowed to indulge in roughly 300 extra calories per day and, since we're getting hefty anyway, we no longer need to fret about our size. Finally, the day I've been waiting for: the ideal is no longer a flat stomach! Let's celebrate the belly!

Yet, this time of indulging is unfortunately tinged with anxiety -- and I'm not even talking about the fact that we're pressured to adhere to a healthy, balanced diet with so many servings of vegetables and lean protein. I won't even go there. What's really a problem is that we're given such flawed, conflicting, unfounded, and often overly stringent advice regarding what we cannot eat.

One case in point: Although the Mayo Clinic says it's safe for pregnant women to eat soft cheeses made from pasteurized milk, some pregnancy literature (including the CDC Web site) warns against consumption of all soft cheeses. As a result, many women avoid Brie, chevre, and feta, not realizing that the overwhelming majority of cheeses sold in this country are pasteurized -- and, thus, should be safe. (In particular, unpasteurized milk cheeses aged under 60 days aren't legal in this country. Since young cheeses are soft, it's safe to assume that all soft cheeses sold in the U.S. are pasteurized. Still, it's a good idea to ask at shops and restaurants just to be sure.)

Refrigerated smoked fish (including lox) also breeds confusion. I've heard conflicting advice about whether it's safe to eat during pregnancy. (Incidentally, my mother "lived on lox" during her pregnancy with me, and it's the one food item I currently miss the most. Just a few decades ago, little was off limits.)

The rules aren't even universal: Whereas French women are advised to avoid salads (yet are not told to completely shun unpasteurized cheeses), American women are encouraged to consume vegetables, raw or cooked. And surely Japanese women would be shocked to find that raw fish is verboten in many parts of the world, including the U.S. -- after all, it's recommended for them. Talk about confounding!

Even though women in other countries drink wine in moderation (meaning, say, a few glasses a week), the American medical community condescendingly tells us to 100 percent avoid our Cabernet. It's as if women can't be trusted to consume intelligently. (The same goes for dosage instructions on over-the-counter medicine bottles. Even though, in many cases, it would be fine to consume more pills than the stated maximum, the bottles impose extra-conservative limits.)

The result: in our paranoid, litigious society, we feel more like children than the powerful women giving birth to them. Perhaps, we've become so obsessed with control that something we wield little control over -- pregnancy -- makes us very nervous. That's why this very natural process has become so subject to excessive worry.

The irony? Stress isn't good for developing babies. That's why we need an authoritative international study to get to the bottom of this thorny subject. In the meantime, all we can do is try to relax and weigh various points of view, lending priority to the best sources (such as the Mayo Clinic). And, of course, we can rely on our common sense.

For me, that's meant enjoying pasteurized soft cheeses on a daily basis, but avoiding the big no-no's on the list (raw or partially-cooked meat, fish, and eggs; unpasteurized cheeses; unheated deli meats; alfalfa sprouts; alcohol; excessive caffeine; cold smoked fish; herbal tea; unpasteurized juices; pate; and fish high in mercury or PCBs). Of course, there are exceptions: last weekend, I slipped up and order a smoked salmon bagel platter -- hey, no one's perfect.