18 Foods and Beverages to Avoid During Pregnancy

It is a big myth that you can eat whatever you want during pregnancy. You may have cravings, but you need to eat foods according to your health. Certain foods you should avoid for your and your baby's health. This is because some foods can greatly impact the fetus's growth and the mother's weight.

Therefore, keep reading this guide to learn more about foods to avoid during pregnancy.

The foods and beverages that you should avoid during pregnancy are as follows:

1. Raw or Uncooked Fish

Raw fish is not a good choice in pregnancy because of its adverse effect on the health of pregnant women. Therefore, they should avoid raw fish especially raw shellfish, during pregnancy.

Harmful Factors: Raw fish can have harmful viruses and bacteria from contaminated water or soil. Therefore, they are avoidable.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Raw fish can cause serious parasite infections in pregnant women, such as vibrio, mono virus, salmonella, listeria etc. The infection further causes weakness and dehydration among pregnant women.

2. Raw Eggs

Pregnant women, for better health, should avoid raw eggs and food that contains raw eggs. Foods that contain raw eggs are:

• Homemade ice-cream
• Lightly scrambled eggs
• Poached eggs
• Homemade mayonnaise, etc.

Harmful Factors: A harmful factor in raw eggs is that they might be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Consuming raw eggs can cause nausea, vomiting, fever, stomach ache and diarrhoea. In addition, they can cause premature birth, uterus cramp or stillbirth.

3. Caffeine

The habit of caffeine intake is very common among individuals. Hence pregnancy needs some elimination in your regular food habit, and caffeine is in the top position on this list.

Harmful Factors: Caffeine can be quickly absorbed through a baby's placenta and cause harm.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Consuming caffeine leads to miscarriage, low birth weight and other body heating issues.

4. Unwashed Products

For pregnant women and everyone, consuming unwashed products is extremely harmful. Pregnancy deserves extra attention, so women should be careful with unwashed fruits and vegetables.

Harmful Factors: Unwashed foods can cause harmful elements such as microorganisms that can cause parasite infection. Some bacteria that unwashed foods have are Salmonella, E Coli, Listeria etc.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Consuming these products can cause serious health issues for both mother and baby. They cause fatal infections in pregnant women, which further affect the baby. For example, it can lead to blindness, brain damage, etc., in the baby.

5. Alcohol

Pregnant women should strictly stop consuming alcohol to improve their health during pregnancy. Not only can this, but consumption of alcohol also causes some afterbirth complications, which are hard to treat.

Harmful Factors: Alcohol has inflammatory and obvious harmful elements that should be eliminated during pregnancy.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Pregnant women can face health issues and miscarriages for overconsumption of alcohol. In addition, the baby's brain and heart get critically affected, which is called foetal alcohol syndrome.

6. Allergy Intriguing Foods

Some foods are allergenic for a maximum number of people. As in pregnancy, the body goes through tremendous changes. Therefore, it is recommended to identify the foods that cause allergies and avoid them.

Harmful Factors: Allergy intriguing foods are harmful because they cause extra heat in the body and attack the respiratory system.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Allergenic foods seriously affect the health of pregnant women as well as the health of the baby. This reduces the growth and development of the baby’s health and brain.

7. High Mercury Fish

Some fishes who live in contaminated water can gather high levels of mercury in their body. These fishes are,

• Shark
• King mackerel
• Tuna (especially bigeye tuna)
• Swordfish
• Tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico
• Orange roughy
• Marlin

Harmful Factors: Mercury is considered a serious toxin to humans and, most importantly, for pregnant women.

Impact on Pregnant Women: High mercury fishes release harmful toxins into a woman's body, further affecting the baby's brain and nervous system.

8. Fishes Exposed to Industrial Pollutants

Local ponds and lakes beside any factory have high pollutants in them. Therefore, fishes from these sources have to be avoided by pregnant women for a healthy pregnancy.

Harmful Factors: Fishes such as trout, salmon, and bluefish caught from local lakes and ponds of polluted water contain a high level of harmful PCB or polychlorinated biphenyls.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Apart from health hazards to pregnant women, these fishes can cause severe issues to babies such as small heads, low birth weight, intellectual blockage etc.

9. Uncooked or Raw Meat

Uncooked meat also has issues like uncooked fish, which contain different harmful bacteria. Therefore, you should refrain from consuming cut meat, hot dog, lunch meat, and deli meat without grilling them properly.

Harmful Factors: Raw meat can have harmful bacteria such as Salmonella, Toxoplasma, E.colli, Listeria etc., that cause serious parasite infection.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Pregnant women can have serious infections, and the baby also faces neurological issues, blindness and epilepsy.

10. Raw Sprouts

Though sprouts are healthy, pregnant women should not consume them raw. Sprouts grow in humid weather, which causes the growth of bacteria that are almost impossible to remove. Therefore, raw sprouts are also responsible for parasite infection in pregnant women.

Harmful Factors: Generally, raw sprouts have harmful Salmonella bacteria in them.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Salmonella bacteria cause serious gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea etc.

11. Unpasteurised Milk

Drinking unpasteurised milk brings unnecessary health hazards to pregnant women because it can be highly contaminated with adverse bacteria. In addition, it does not add any nutritional value as well.

Harmful Factors: Unpasteurised milk contains Salmonella, Cryptosporidium, E.colli, Listeria etc., bacteria.

Impact on Pregnant Women: The main risk factor of unpasteurised milk is Listeria bacteria which exerts harmful effects on the health of a pregnant woman and causes miscarriage.

Drinking unpasteurised milk during pregnancy can also be responsible for the death of newborns.

12. Soft Cheese

Soft cheese such as feta, blue-veined cheeses, goat cheese and brie are generally made from unpasteurised milk. Therefore, they are not safe to consume during pregnancy.

Harmful Factors: Soft cheeses contain harmful Listeria bacteria.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Apart from health hazards like flu or gastrointestinal diseases to pregnant women, infection of Listeria bacteria can cause miscarriage and premature birth.

13. Herbal Teas

Though sounding healthy, herbal teas can have different compounds unsuitable for pregnant women. They irritate the uterus, give trouble to the growth of the foetus and many more.

Harmful Factors: Herbal teas contain different compounds such as tannins, safrole and pyrrolizidine alkaloid that react with medicines and cause serious complications.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Teas like thyme, motherwort, liquorice, blue and black cohos, etc., cause premature labour and miscarriage. Further, the consumption of teas like motherwort and borage is responsible for congenital disabilities.

14. Deli Meats

Deli or lunch meats are generally used to make sandwiches; sometimes, they are not cooked properly. Therefore, they raise the chances of complications during pregnancy.

Harmful Factors: Deli meats are highly rich in nitrate, which is harmful to pregnant women.

Impact on Pregnant Women: High nitrate consumption through deli meats during pregnancy can cause cancer and abnormalities in the unborn child.

15. Sugar-rich Food

You may crave sugary foods such as cakes, chocolates, sugary beverages, candies etc., but you need to cut them from your diet chart. Sugar-rich foods have harmful effects on pregnancy weight and cause other discomforts.

Harmful Factors: The main harmful effect of sugar-rich foods is that they pass through the baby's placenta and increase the blood sugar level.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Sugar-rich foods cause vomiting, nausea, heartburn and constipation among pregnant women.

16. Canned Foods

These are one of the major foods to avoid during pregnancy as they contain preservatives and harmful elements. Therefore, canned foods such as sodas, tuna, soup, fruits and vegetables are a strict no for pregnant women.

Harmful Factors: Canned foods contain Bisphenol A, a harmful substance to fertility and pregnant women.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Pregnant women can have serious heart complications, liver diseases, and cancer from these foods.

17. Fatty Foods

During pregnancy, women gain weight as a natural consequence. However, consuming foods that add more fat should not be a choice. Therefore, pregnant women should avoid fatty foods such as oily fast foods, frozen pizza, processed foods, and junk in the sensitive stage of pregnancy.

Harmful Factors: Fatty foods have harmful factors such as high cholesterol and saturated fats.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Fatty foods can lead to heart diseases, preeclampsia and diabetes. Further, they cause premature delivery and birth complications.

18. Liquorice

Studies show liquorice or mulethi reacts adversely to the brain function of the unborn child. Therefore, consider liquorice as a food to avoid for a pregnant woman.

Harmful Factors: Liquorice contains glycyrrhizin, a toxin harmful to a baby's health.

Impact on Pregnant Women: Liquorice is responsible for the intellectual blockage and lower IQ of the child.