Terrible news for pregnant seafood lovers: you can’t even eat this anymore

The list of things you’d better not eat as a pregnant woman is already pretty long, and many of the items on it are fairly ‘well known’. Raw-milk cheese? No-no. Raw fish? Say see you later to sushi. And because knowledge and research are constantly improving, something else is regularly added to the list. So if, as a pregnant woman, you have an insatiable craving for buckets full of shrimp cocktail, you won’t be happy with the following news:

Recently, the Health Council issued stricter advice regarding nutritional recommendations for pregnant women. And to be honest, it includes things that even non-pregnant people might scratch their heads over…

Dirty fish

PFAS, mercury, and dioxins (harmful substances that can enter food through the environment): surely no one wants to ingest those? But if you’re pregnant, you need to be especially careful, because they can seriously endanger the healthy development of a growing baby in the womb. The sad truth is that research is increasingly revealing where these substances are found, and that some things pregnant women are actually advised to eat may in reality do more harm than good.

Clear guidelines

The latest updated report issued by the Health Council, whose recommendations are compiled by the Netherlands Nutrition Centre in the ZwangerHap app, now also includes shrimp. It is still recommended that you eat fish twice a week (once lean fish and once oily fish), but that too has been reduced from ‘two to three times’. This is because of the concentration of toxic substances, and also in the interests of sustainability.

Thought you were doing the right thing

It’s incredibly annoying that shrimp are now also on the ‘red’ list, just like mackerel – something that rather shocked us. A few years ago, mackerel was still the fish we were so happy to be allowed to eat, much better than all that ‘bad’ tuna and conveniently sourced nearby too. But no, even that wonderfully tender smoked mackerel, carefully flaked and mixed with some capers, lemon juice (and, for me, a drizzle of sriracha) is now on the warning list.

Further research

Also noteworthy is the committee’s comment that it considers it “important [that] adequate information on the levels of methylmercury, dioxins and PFAS becomes available in the short term for all fish species commonly eaten in the Netherlands. The assessment of the fish species should then be updated.” For now, the Council has created a clear table showing the extent to which exposure to harmful substances can be limited by choosing the right fish species:

There go your seafood dreams

For everyone now seeing their dreams of nine months of unlimited shrimp cocktail and pasta with scampi shatter: we feel your pain. Incidentally, the Health Council does say that as a pregnant woman, you really don’t need to worry if you’ve had toast with eel or mackerel once; this advice concerns meal-sized portions.

Curious about the full report, ‘Nutritional recommendations for pregnant women’? You can download it after clicking the link.

Read also:

• Handy list: these cheeses are safe to eat when you’re pregnant
• This is the secret behind Sergio’s shrimp croquettes
• Recipe: marshmallow gazpacho