Need seen to stress pregnancy food risk

AUCKLAND: Firsttime mothers are more conscious of what they eat while pregnant than those who have already had two or more children, a new survey has found.

The research, published in today’s New Zealand Medical Journal, also revealed most mothers did not know all the foods that could potentially put their baby’s life in danger.

Researchers stressed that while baby deaths from food infections were rare, they were also preventable.

The research surveyed 205 pregnant women in hospital and online setting during December 2017 and January 2018.

Findings showed that while the average knowledge score for food safety was 95%, only 25% of participants answered all questions correctly.

Most unknown unsafe foods were. —

Cakes, slices and muffins that have added cream or custard. Hummus.

Salads, including fruit salads that have been made at a shop or cafe.

Cheese that is soft or semisoft. The most worrying discovery was the high number of women who were aware of the danger foods but chose to ignore them, one of the researchers of the study, University of Otago Associate Prof Tony Walls said.

One in four pregnant women said they were ‘‘not concerned’’ by food safety in pregnancy.

While more than half of women surveyed, reported being ‘‘very concerned’’, the majority of those were having their first or second baby, suggesting mothers became more relaxed about food safety the more children they had.

Prof Walls, who is also a practising paediatric infectious disease specialist at Christchurch Hospital, said that while foodborne illnesses were not common, they could be deadly for babies by miscarriage, preterm delivery or stillbirth.

Listeriosis was the most common foodborne infection leading to baby deaths.

A previous study conducted by Prof Walls and research lead Emma Jeffs, a junior doctor at Christchurch Hospital specialising in pregnancy, found that between 1997 and 2016, there were 147 pregnancyassociated cases of listeriosis in New Zealand.

There were also 22 deaths in children aged 28 days to 15 years old who were linked to having listeriosis.

Prof Walls said this was the first research of its kind in New Zealand to measure the impact, and there was still much more work needed to discover the extent of the risks caused by foodborne infection.

In the paper, researchers said there were several factors leading to a lack of food safety knowledge and while healthcare providers were identified as the preferred source of information, difficulty communicating those messages was said to be a problem.

Close to 70% of participants reported receiving information from their midwife, 40% from family or friends, and 33% received advice from GPs.

Other factors highlighted in the study included lack of returning to follow up appointments caused by information overload, underestimated risk due to lack of experiences with foodrelated illness and convenience of highrisk foods overriding food safety.

‘‘The more awareness we can bring to this issue the better,’’ Prof Walls said. — The New Zealand Herald