Eating for Two: Of Cheese and Anxiety
Saturday night I went out to dinner with two friends, one who does not have children and one whose daughter just celebrated her first birthday. The former suggested that I might want to order a certain salad, but the new mother said, “No, she can’t have feta! You can’t eat soft cheese when you’re pregnant.” Sheepishly I thought of the occasional salads with pasteurized feta I had been enjoying at home and asked, “Isn’t it okay if it’s pasteurized?” Granting that her doctor is very conservative, she said she had been told to avoid soft cheeses like feta altogether. The week before at a dinner party, another friend (who is a little farther along in her pregnancy than I am) had mentioned her doctor’s opinion that anything pasteurized was safe.
Understanding what is and is not likely to give me listeriosis has been vexing. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there because there aren’t "safe foods" and "unsafe foods"—just relative levels of risk. My two biggest questions have been, "Can I eat pasteurized soft cheeses? And can I eat raw milk cheeses if they are hard and aged, like Parmigiano Reggiano and Gruyère?" I think I’ve finally worked it out, at least well enough for myself.
