Cold cuts are now sprayed with a food additive that helps prevent Listeria before packaging. You don't need to panic if you are pregnant and have been eating deli meats. The probabilities are in your favor that nothing has happened.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advises that pregnant women "avoid eating hot dogs, lunch meats, cold cuts, other deli meats (such as bologna), or fermented or dry sausages unless they are heated to an internal temperature of 165°F or until steaming hot just before serving."
Pregnant women are about 10 times more likely to get listeriosis than other healthy adults. An estimated 1/6 of all Listeria cases occur in pregnant women.
If the food is contaminated with bacteria or parasites and a person who is pregnant becomes infected, there can be other risks to a pregnancy. These can include preterm delivery (having the baby before 37 weeks of pregnancy) or pregnancy loss.
You may be thinking about avoiding things like sushi and deli meat, which are off-limits for pregnant ladies. If this makes you feel more comfortable, by all means, stay away! But if you slip up here and there, don't freak. “During that two-week wait, it's probably not as big of a deal.
“If you're pregnant, you really shouldn't have deli meat,” Schaffner says. The only way to ensure that sliced deli meat is safe to eat, he adds, is by heating it to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, to guarantee that any lingering surface bacteria is killed off.
Deli meats can carry a bacteria that's especially dangerous during pregnancy, but Teigen said microwaving them first is "a way to get around the system." Expert guidance recommends pregnant people heat cold cuts to 165 degrees F or "until steaming" to kill bacteria. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
How common is toxoplasmosis during pregnancy? The chances of getting toxoplasmosis for the first time during pregnancy are thought to be very small. Even if you do become infected for the first time during pregnancy, this doesn't necessarily mean your baby is in danger.
Listeriosis is a kind of food poisoning caused by Listeria bacteria. During pregnancy, you can pass the bacteria to your baby. This can cause problems, including: Miscarriage.
Your provider can give you a blood test to find out if you have the infection. Even though blood tests are a regular part of prenatal care, you don't usually get tested for toxoplasmosis. So be sure to talk to your provider if you think you have the infection.
The symptoms can take a few days or up to six weeks to appear, which can make diagnosing an infection difficult. The good news is that listeriosis in pregnant women is very rare in Australia and New Zealand.
Newborn babies infected with Listeria can develop either early onset or late onset listeriosis. Early onset listeriosis develops 1-2 days after birth, and the baby often has signs of a serious bacterial infection.
Mild symptoms may include a fever, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. If the more severe form of listeriosis develops, symptoms may include headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions. For the very young, the elderly, and the immune-compromised listeriosis can result in death.
Subway sandwiches are safe for pregnant women to eat if they're heated until hot, rather than just warm. This means either microwaved for a few seconds or having the sandwich toasted – sometimes a little more than normal.
Cold Cuts and Deli Meat
Listeria can survive cold temps, which means there's still an off-chance they could make you sick; however, chicken that has been recently cooked and is still under the warmer is fine. Bottom line: Avoid deli meat straight from the counter, but you can eat it heated up.
Listeriosis can cause mild, flu-like symptoms such as fever, chills, muscle aches, and diarrhea or upset stomach. You also may have a stiff neck, headache, confusion, or loss of balance. Symptoms may appear as late as 2 months after you have eaten something with Listeria. Many pregnant women do not have any symptoms.
When you're pregnant, it's more than just your health you're protecting. Some bouts of food poisoning can pose problems for your baby, whose immune system isn't strong enough yet to fight off germs. When you start having symptoms that seem like food poisoning, call your doctor right away.
Additional symptoms of food poisoning during pregnancy include headache, fever, abdominal pain, dehydration, and bloody stool. Some of these symptoms may present like normal pregnancy symptoms or flu symptoms (nausea, vomiting), so it may be difficult to tell if you have food poisoning or not.
In Australia, primary infection with toxoplasmosis during pregnancy is rare Gilbert 2002 although it is estimated that between 60% and 80% of Australians are non-immune (Pappas et al 2009).
The risk of maternal transmission of the parasite to the fetus during the first trimester of pregnancy (when the baby is most vulnerable) is relatively low, at 15 to 20 percent. However, by the third trimester, a pregnant woman with toxoplasmosis has a 60 percent chance of infecting her child.
Up to half babies who become infected with toxoplasmosis during the pregnancy are born early (prematurely). The infection can damage the baby's eyes, nervous system, skin, and ears. Often, there are signs of infection at birth. However, babies with mild infections may not have symptoms for months or years after birth.
"For deli meats and cheeses, the risk is that they're held and processed [in a deli environment]. It's also because they are kept at a refrigerator temperature, and typically you can see that listeria likes the cold and can survive in that temperature. So heat actually does kill the listeria on these products.
CDC estimates that Listeria is the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness, or food poisoning, in the United States. An estimated 1,600 people get sick from Listeria each year, and about 260 die.
Eating cold cured meats that are uncooked could lead to a small risk of food poisoning. This is because raw meat contains a parasite that causes an infection called toxoplasmosis. This can create complications in pregnancy, including miscarriage and stillbirth. However, it's totally fine when cooked on pizza.