Naturally, it is essential to use common sense when eating fish during pregnancy. As for pasteurized or vacuum-packed products, such as surimi, it is imperative to check certain essential points such as the expiration date or maintaining the cold chain.
1. Why should pregnant women avoid consuming surimi?
It is well known that pregnant women can have particular food cravings. Among these, the craving for surimi can occur at any time, apparently without major consequences. However, pregnancy may limit the consumption of this popular stick due to some specific dietary recommendations. As with other foods such as sushi, smoked salmon and raw fish preparations, surimi is not recommended for pregnant women due to its origin based on fish flesh or paste, thus constituting a central point of concern.
Although surimi is a cooked food, it still has a slight drawback. Like raw seafood and fish, surimi may contain a bacteria called listeria, which can only grow when stored at low temperatures. Despite being cooked, surimi goes through a preliminary freezing stage (-30°C) before being cooked in the oven after the addition of certain ingredients. As Health Insurance indicates in its file on bacterial infections during pregnancy, listeria is responsible for a disease known as listeriosis. The latter not only endangers the pregnant woman, but also the newborn. In the most common cases, it can lead to miscarriages and, in certain cases, be associated with meningitis, the after-effects of which can be observed in the newborn from birth.
2. When can consuming surimi be safe for your health?
Surimi is a cooked food, unlike sushi which is regularly raw. As the Pasteur Institute indicates, listeria, which can develop up to a temperature of +4°C, loses all its harmful capacity and therefore dies when surimi is heated well beyond that. For this purpose, the conventionally accepted cooking standard for surimi is 100 minutes at 70°C, or more, in “airtight packaging”.
Thus, for pregnant women, it is recommended for their health to opt for surimi which benefits from the NF V 45-068 (2002) standard on their packaging. This guarantees good cooking conditions, but also conservation. This does not exclude paying particular attention to the expiry date and the storage conditions indicated on the product.
Sources
Read also :
⋙ Pregnancy: here is the amount of caffeine not to exceed according to an expert
⋙ Beware of sunburn during pregnancy!
⋙ Eat well while breastfeeding baby