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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

I stopped taking advice like this seriously when my wife became pregnant.

You'd have one group of "experts" saying you shouldn't eat fish, a second saying you should eat as much fish as you can (common advice in Japan, apparently), and a third saying you should just continue as usual[1].

Of course, nobody ever tests their theories because that would risk killing a baby.

If potatoes were actually dangerous, they'd have a big red label on every bag, in 6 languages, telling you to throw them out if they have slight bits of green on them. Perhaps a little colour chart that tells you how green is too green.

Of course, they don't, and the industry hasn't been sued into oblivion, so based on that I'd be shocked if they were as poisonous as this article suggets.

[1] All advice we read recommends pregnant women limit intake of high-mercury fish such as shark and tuna, and I think there might be actual evidence for this one too.

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Ah 2 things

1) Can eat fish. But not raw fish. In fact when my wife became pregnant I was bombarded with do’s and don’t. In the end after allll the information gathered, the gyno explained:

“Don’t eat raw foods like fish and salad. Salad is the most common cause of food poisoning in restaurants. And raw fish can contain parasites that can make you sick. The objective is to reduce your chance of getting food poisoning because it’s a huge loss of fluids and that could be bad for the baby.”

2) DHA is important for the growth of the baby. I forget exactly why. But that gets complicated because you can’t take cos liver oil as that can be harmful. You want fish oil that’s from fish meat, not liver. But it’s harder to come by and the dosage often exceeds recommendations. So in Taiwan atleast they suggest you take DHA from seaweed.

(Going through all this right now again with the 2nd one on the way)

Have you looked into the primary evidence for any of the things you've said?

More often than not, most of the stuff I've read that doesn't pass the common sense "sniff test" tends to be based on ridiculously flimsy evidence.

Raw fish consumption in pregnancy is actually recommended in certain countries (Japan being the most notable one). The salad thing is not something I've heard, but a quick Google search shows sources from Singapore, the UK and Australia (except for NSW, for some reason?) all claiming it's perfectly safe.

Going a bit further, the egg thing is based on a single case from the 1950s, follow-up studies on women who got the chicken pox vaccine while pregnant shows that they had a _lower_ incidence of varicella-induced miscarriage, and there's also no evidence that children will get sick if you make their formula using properly treated tap water from a metropolitan source. People in Spain and Italy regularly have a glass of wine with dinner while pregnant; they just don't get shitfaced and everything is OK.

I don't know why all of this pleasure-sucking, stress-inducing bullshit "advice" is accepted by anyone, but I suspect it wouldn't last long if men were the ones who got pregnant.

So in regards to raw fish. Back when I had my first daughter I asked our Japanese co workers who said no way to eating raw fish. It must be cooked. Or if you do eat it, it must be with REAL wasabi. (This is when I discovered that wasabi we get is fake!)

The salad thing appeared to be true. It’s because salad is often not washed properly or prepared with bare hands not washed properly. It’s more likely to cause food poisoning than chicken…

We ditched a lot of other myths. There was no way my wife was going to drink only hot drinks in singapore. (We were told not to drink cold drinks)

My wife had really bad morning sickness and we were told not to have junk/fried food. But the only food she didn’t throw up was steak and McDonald’s.

Still washed hair / haircut, ate watermelon, didn’t do confinement properly. Etc

At the end of the day most of its rubbish or a valid warning. But nothing to be stressed about.

> Raw fish consumption in pregnancy is actually recommended in certain countries (Japan being the most notable one).

No, it's common knowledge in Japan that you don't eat raw fish when pregnant.

I don't know why some English websites claim otherwise... all Japanese sources I see agree with me, e.g. this one, supposedly doctor-reviewed: https://woman.mynavi.jp/kosodate/articles/7089

I've never know someone to be particularly more prone to food poisoning from eating something fresh like a salad?

In the US there are frequent recalls on lettuce usually romaine or packaged salads for salmonella or some other bacteria. Example of most recent: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...

Its not about the ingredients, its about whether they are cleaned and the fact that there is no heat/acid/denaturing to kill the agents causing food poisoning

The rules for pregnant women are strange. In some parts of europe they are still told to avoid fresh salad. In north america any visibly pregnant women ordering wine with dinner risks being kicked out of the restaurant. Soft cheese, radishes ... everywhere has thier own social rules about what pregnant people should eat. My grandmother had the best advice: You went to college. You are healthy. Eat whatever your mother ate and your kids will be fine.

Half of pregnant advice isn’t based on serious research, as knowingly harming a foetus to disprove a claim is out of question. We only get “large scale of absorbing X for decades can have bad consequences” levels of granularity.

On “safe” diets, you have the same thing happening for diarrhea, where what’s supposed to be safe food will heavily change depending on culture and what most of the population is assumed to be eating everyday. In France cheese if said to be fine outside of raw and some special cheese (like Roquefort), lean meat is recommended with potatoes, cabbage etc., bread is considered OK, where as you point out Japan recommends lean fish and other local vegetables, bread is out, cheese as well.

Considering everyone’s gut env. is different, it makes sense that what is safe and not actually has wild individual variations and generic advice is to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

You can know most things do to chemistry and then there are places you can test the theory. For example night-shade vegetables contain solanine which people believed caused inflammation and increased arthritis pain. Some people do get pain from eating night shades and those people just avoid them. It just isn't a universal truth.

https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/nut...

You should consider listening to official advises backed up by real science instead. See here for an example: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you....

> Of course, they don't, and the industry hasn't been sued into oblivion

I wouldn’t use that as evidence. Plenty of stuff is dangerous but doesn’t have such labels. Heck any corner can be fatal. Any electric appliance can burn your house down. These are not rare events, it just depends on how many loud people notice.

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