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I still eat deli meats (as long as I know where it came from and trust the soure) and soft serve ice cream, these were with the blessing of my doctor. Eggs I would still be very hesitant about!

I'm definitely in the better safe than sorry camp. i'm an anxious person by nature so the momentary enjoyment of eating whatever I felt like wouldn't outweigh the anxiety I would feel later.

I also wonder about fresh from the farm food and fresh squeezed (unpasteurized) juice from a shop, though. Like, if I see someone juice fresh fruits and veggies in front of me, isn't it the same as eating the fruits and veggies raw? It's just not worth is for me to chance the (very few) things I have control over though.

I evaluated each food individually, and allowed myself to have a fair number of the "do not eat" foods either sparingly or in moderation.

I just used common sense to decide what "risks" I was ok with taking. I had low iron throughout pregnancy so I made sure to eat lots of red meat....problem is that I refuse to cook any red meat beyond medium rare at the most. So despite the recommendation that all meat be cooked well done, I ate steak cooked rare, almost medium rare several times per week throughout pregnancy. And this was just normal meat I would get at the local supermarket - not organic or from a locally grown farmer's market or anything like that. I do only eat the higher quality cuts of meat but I don't really think that has anything to do with it. Regardless, it seemed a silly rule to me and not one I was going to follow. I did refrain from cold cuts and soft serve though, even though I think the risk there is pretty darn small as well. Ah well.

@yoursilverlining: Yup, 100% agree.

@yoursilverlining: this is how i would have been ideally but my husband freaked out about stuff all the time so i didn't bother.

I've eaten whatever I wanted. I'm vegetarian though, so deli meat and fish was never part of my diet.
I was told to avoid soft cheese, but figured risks were so low that I would eat it anyway.

I was always on the better to be safe than sorry team. Except with soft serve..... because I didn't learn about that one till my third trimester.

@softcream: I didn't know soft serve was a no-no for a long time while I was pregnant. It certainly wasn't on my doctor's list, and I ate it every day on our baby moon. I was pretty surprised to find out it was on the 'avoid' list, but I went ahead and ate it here and there anyway.

Soft serve is on the no list because the machines it comes out of, if poorly cleaned, can build and transmit listeria. That being said, I totally order fast food shakes that come out of machines. I also still order dishes with goat cheese and queso fresco. I would probably order sushi but DH won't let me. Everything else (runny eggs, non-nuked cold cuts, rare mear) I'm too scared to try!

the only thing i avoided was alcohol, but everything else i ate in moderation.

Glad to see other people eating runny eggs, too. I've been feeling bad about eating them but I figure if you can get sick from eating fruit, nowadays, why not eat a runny egg? I was stickler in my first pregnancy but not this one. I've decided that the risks of actually getting sick from one of the No foods is very low.

@Andrea: salmonella is a risk that is reasonable to take, I think. Listeria is a much more substantial risk.

There's the risk of getting sick, and then there's the risk of what could happen to baby if you do get sick. With listeria, the second risk is pretty scary!

@mrbee: I believe eating runny eggs and most recently, mangoes, is a salmonella risk and not listeria?

@mrbee: no worries! You had me for a moment. I double checked the listeria list and I don't eat those!

Oh wait, you are posting from the tub? Morning bath?

@mrbee: that's what I don't get. Listeria IS likely to have a terrible outcome when you are pregnant, but a lot of doctors tell women not to worry about soft serve.

I choose to to make educated choices about my food.

I still get soft serve, but I mostly choose the flavor of the week - that's likely to have been cleaned out recently, and always from a local place that i know is spotless.

I will Eat med rare steaks from a reputable source but hamburgers have to be fully cooked.

Most of the food borne illness seems to be cropping up during processing - when beef from a bunch of cows is slaughtered quickly in an assembly line and combined together to make frankenbeef. When apples are presliced and bagged (McDonald's). When salad greens are washed and bagged.

That said, there's so much food borne illness out there that we would have NOtHING to eat if we avoided likely-contaminated food. My cousin got salmonella from tomatoes while she was pregnant. And a lot of people got e coli from green onions a few years back.

@dagret: if your craving is strong, you could also buy a soft serve machine! They start at $30-40, not too bad!

@JerricaBenton: @MrsHotDog: I was the exact same way. If anything were to ever happen because of my brief moment of indulgence I could never forgive myself.

@softcream: I personally don't think the food being "clean" or not would make a difference. Eating a egg raw whether it's from a farm 50 miles away that is humane is no different than eating a egg raw from a farm a 1,000 miles away that packs all their chickens into one tight coop.

I ate and pretty much eat whatever.. As long as I cook it myself or it's from a reputable and clean place.

I've had an occasional glass of wine. I eat lunch meat, but only packaged lunch meat, because that's what my doctor ok'd (she said no from the deli, packaged is fine). I have not had soft serve and probably will continue to avoid it. Now that summer's pretty much over, that won't be so hard to do anymore. In the beginning of the summer, I was eating mangoes like they were going out of style, but once the salmonella outbreak hit, I stopped buying mangoes. I haven't eaten dippy eggs, which has been difficult because it's the only way I like them usually. To me, it's not worth the risk. I don't think any less of anyone who does eat those things, but it's just not something I feel comfortable doing. Sometimes, I envy people who are comfortable eating soft serve ice cream and dippy eggs. I'm just not. To each their own, I say.