this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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I have a rule of thumb. If experts and doctors recommend pregnant woman to not eat or drink anything, it's probably better to stay away from it.
Sushi! How can you not?
Mercury
Hmm, can't really argue with that
I avoid all seafood for this very reason. With all of the constant deregulations and fines that are paid as the cost of doing business... the water just isn't safe anymore.
"You just need to know where it's coming from." is what I always here. "Do you know that the crab or fish is actually coming from some safe haven of clean water and clean fish food? How can any consumer actually be certain of that when we know that companies will lie about that?"
Some people regularly try to "buy American" just to find out that some part or all of it was made or sourced from somewhere else. A company will lie to save a buck.
Yeah, I'm probably not going to stay away from honey.
There's no recommendation against honey for pregnant women, only for infants. There's some concerns about bad quality honey from unknown sources though. So as long as you eat the good stuff..
Ah, I might be misremembering that. Thanks.
I have some pretty local sources for (afaik) pretty good honey that I like.
I don't know of any guidance about avoiding Erythritol when pregnant, but aside from that, the sentiment is generally reasonable but you'll still end up avoiding foods that would only negatively impact a pregnancy. You can imagine the other side of that coin: are you taking vitamin supplements that are meant to be taken by someone who is pregnant? I would imagine not, but then the question becomes "Why not?". (not trying to be hostile, just making a point)
"Why not"
Because I only have to support my own body instead of growing another. On the other hand, whatever can harm an embryo because it is much smaller than me, will in a way also harm me.
I wont need Vitamin B-12 as much as a pregnant woman, but it wont harm to stay vary of things that might harm the child.
Just to add to my initial comment. There's studies about the most common sweeteners (erythriol not included), and they put the risk at low, but wont recommend anything because the datatset is too small to come to a definite conclusion. So it might not even be problematic. Would you risk it though?
When you say "I don't need X because I'm not pregnant" it looks like a contradiction when you say "I should avoid X even though I'm not pregnant". There are specific reasons purely because of a person being pregnant that they should avoid or consume certain matter, so I see the blanket statement as overly simplistic (but not wildly outrageous).
When we had our recent child we avoided everything that had any chance of a negative impact (and it's easy to do when the pregnant person is a knowledgeable nurse who takes care of pregnant mothers every day). Why take a chance, but it's really "Why should a pregnant person take a chance?".
What does your wife say about this? Is it better to not take those things even when not pregnant?
We're just two laymen arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.