Cigarette smoking is so dangerous, and that danger is so well-established by now, that if you see a pregnant woman smoking one, it is likely to be in a situation comedy rather than in real life. What about wine? While women in Europe and Australia have no issue with a glass of wine, and they have no more birth defects than American women who are told they must adopt a Puritan lifestyle or their children will be cursed, it is still going to get you a dirty look in the United States.
But pregnant women are not wrong to be fatigued by decades of new claims, thanks to trial lawyers at Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Working Group, and many more. Now, thanks to manufactured junk science claims, a pregnant woman can worry about a lecture if she buys a box of macaroni and cheese, organic or otherwise.
Joining that chorus is a group calling itself the American Pregnancy Association, who have produced their own Foods to Avoid list and it contains...everything. Well, not everything officially. But Brad Imler - yes, a man - is not being shy about telling pregnant women to avoid, and he says everything. It's for the baby.
Rice, soda (both regular and diet), anything in packaging, it's not just pregnancy paranoia, they believe. It's the precautionary principle run amok.
Their logic works. If you give up all food and drink, except organic kale or something, and the baby is fine, they get to credit their claims. And if your baby has a birth defect, you may go back to their list and remember that one time you ate organic macaroni and cheese - but because it had packaging and those phthalates that political science majors at environmental groups say are dangerous you will tell all your friends not to do what you did. Once enough people blame their organic macaroni and cheese, trial lawyers sue, and then they give money to groups to create new scares.
So what should you avoid? Raw sprouts always, whether you are pregnant or not, never eat those, or raw milk either. And raw vegetables, even if they're organic. Unless you wash them yourself. The reason all farmers wash vegetables is not because of pesticides, it's because of bacteria. Listeria can cross the placental barrier and lead to a septic abortion and pregnant women have a reduced immune system, which results in being 10 times more likely to get Listeria. So sushi is out for the same reason. But other stuff about phthalates and "endocrine disruptors"? Those are claims made using statistical correlation, notes the non-profit American Council on Science and Health, and they get media attention without noting a difference between absolute and relative risk.