Risks Of Eating Salad During Pregnancy
It is not advisable to eat only one food group, whether pregnant or not. Every human being needs a varied and balanced diet to be healthy. Therefore, eating salad during pregnancy, exclusively, can have serious consequences for health.
A salad can be a good addition to a meal or a light meal throughout the day. However, a woman should not have a single food source, much less if she is pregnant.
If that happens, it will not be providing your body, and therefore not your baby, with all the nutrients it needs to develop in a healthy way.
Risks of Eating Salad During Pregnancy
During pregnancy, you tend to pay more attention to your diet. Despite this, there are mothers who stop consuming certain foods or concentrate on a single group, without any medical reason.
In fact, some are more concerned with losing weight or keeping their appearance – as much as possible – so as not to look too different from when they weren’t pregnant.
This can be good, up to a point. It’s important to take care of yourself to feel attractive. However, it is not right to be concerned only with this when living a healthy life and within an adequate body mass index. Much less a pregnancy, as there is not just one organism that needs nutrients, but two.
In addition to the nutritional deficit, eating salad during pregnancy without properly washing vegetables (or fruits, if applicable) is a risk factor when it comes to contracting diseases caused by bacteria, among other agents. In addition, the lack of preparation of some foods, especially in certain dishes, can cause health problems.
Next, we’ll look at some of the major illnesses caused by poor food hygiene.
salmonella
It is an intoxication that many believed could be contracted solely through the consumption of eggs, dairy products or meat. However, it has been found that people can also get it through fruits and vegetables. Therefore, it is recommended to wash them before being consumed. This disease has symptoms such as fever and gastroenteritis.
Escherichia coli
This bacteria can be very harmful during pregnancy. It starts to lodge in the intestinal mucosa and then causes everything from diarrhea to cystitis, among other infections. A person can get it if they don’t wash vegetables properly.
toxoplasmosis
This disease can be transmitted either by raw eggs or by raw or undercooked meat. There is also a risk of getting toxoplasmosis if during pregnancy a woman consumes vegetables that have not been washed properly. Its main symptoms are headache, fever and muscle pain.
Anisakis
This parasitic condition can be transmitted through the consumption of undercooked or poorly washed food.
The first symptoms that appear when contracting this disease are nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. But this can vary depending on the location of the parasite. The disease can be treated, but you should always consult your doctor first.
Prevention measures
As we mentioned before, one of the main ways to avoid any illness when consuming salads is to properly wash the vegetables that will be used. It doesn’t matter if the packages indicate that they were pre-washed, it’s best to do it the same way.
Here are some other steps you should take if you want to eat salad during pregnancy:
- When putting any type of dressing on the salad, it is important to use industrialized ones. After that, you should immediately put it in the fridge so that it doesn’t contaminate.
- An important point that we must highlight is to avoid eating salads, during pregnancy, that are not prepared in a homemade way. That’s because there’s no way we can guarantee that a restaurant washes fruits and vegetables properly.
- It is vital to use foods that do not harm your pregnancy. These are the ones that stand out: sausages, raw meat, raw and smoked fish.
- Again, it is important to remember that the foods that will be used to make the salad must be perfectly washed, both for the health of the mother and the baby. In supermarkets, you can find special products for cleaning food.
Fruits to avoid during pregnancy
In addition to vegetable salads, during pregnancy, it is also customary to prepare fruit salads to maintain a healthy diet. This is usually a good thing, but not entirely. Some fruits can be harmful during the gestation process. These are some of them:
- Non-organic fruits: although there is not much information about the damage that non-organic fruits cause, it is known that the fruits with the highest amount of pesticides are: peaches, strawberries, apples, blueberries, nectarines, cherries, raisins and pears.
- Unpasteurized juices: fruit drinks that are not pasteurized can bring diseases such as salmonella, cryptosporidium and E. coli.
- Acidic Fruits: Although this type of fruit does not pose a serious danger to pregnant women, they can increase the symptoms of heartburn or reflux. Therefore, we recommend avoiding them if you suffer from these ailments.
Salads during pregnancy are foods that can be very beneficial to the body, as long as they are consumed within a balanced diet.
The important thing is to take into account the healthiness and avoid consuming foods that are not in optimal condition, or that have not been washed properly. Remember that this affects not only the mother’s health, but the baby’s as well.
