Not being able to eat ham is one of the prohibitions that pregnant women carry worse. If the woman has not passed the toxoplasmosis it is recommended to avoid raw or undercooked meats due to the risk of contracting this disease during pregnancy, but new research is on the way to demonstrate that the risk of ham is perhaps not as much as it seems. They think that The more cured in the ham, the less risk of getting toxoplasmosis in pregnancy.
Although we are not yet at the point of affirming that consuming ham in pregnancy is safe, research is going very well. "It is being verified how the time of the healing process, the salt content and other factors make the survival of the toxoplasmosis parasite unfeasible over time," experts say.
When you get pregnant, in the first test you are confirmed if you have passed the disease or not, that is, if you have the antibodies or not. In the case of not having suffered from it, they indicate the recommendations to follow that include avoiding the consumption of raw meats, whether they are sausages, fish, sushi, etc., washing utensils that have been in contact with raw meat, washing fruits and vegetables well, Always wash your hands before eating and avoid contact with cat feces (in domestic cats, the risk is believed to be minimal).
Toxoplasmosis is an infectious disease caused by the parasite toxoplasma gondii which in most cases does not show symptoms or is very mild, so rarely does one know if it has happened or not, but in pregnancy it can be very serious if it is transmitted to the fetus.
Why do you begin to demystify the risk of ham in pregnancy?
On the one hand, it is believed that if the woman has not passed the disease until she is pregnant, it is practically impossible for her to get it during the months of gestation by eating the same thing she ate before. The packaged products that we can acquire in large supermarkets and from trusted brands have passed rigorous quality controls and should be disease free.
The healing time could mean a deactivation of the parasite toxoplasma gondii, and therefore a trusted passport for ham.
A study carried out in 2011 by specialists in Nutrition and Bromatology of the University of Zaragoza on parasite survival dealt with analyzing hams at 7 and 14 months and concluded that at 14 months no viable parasites were detected in the final product, so its consumption is a minimum risk of acquiring toxoplasmosis.
How many more months to cure, periods longer than 24 months, it has been clearly seen that it is safer.
Therefore, if it is acquired in ham at a trusted site, from a trusted brand, which has been properly salted, at adequate temperatures and with a high cure time it is very strange that the ham has contracted the parasite and has remained I live during that time.
How do we know the healing time?
Generally, packaged hams do not indicate the cure time on the labels. Therefore, theirs would be to modify the labeling policy by requiring brands to provide this information.
Previously frozen yes you can
One of the recommendations is that if the ham is frozen then it can be thawed and eaten, since the toxoplasmosis parasite does not withstand temperatures of 20 ° C below zero for 2 days or 10 ° C below zero for 3 days, therefore you can eat food that has been frozen at 10 degrees below zero or more as long as they have been frozen for a few days, and have been thawing them slowly.
It is even considered that the brands themselves comply with this previous freezing process to ensure that they reach the consumer free of the parasite.
It is true that even if they tell us that it is "practically impossible" and the risk is "minimal" nobody plays it. Therefore, for now, it is still recommended to avoid the ham, so there is no choice but to endure it, or eat it after it has been properly frozen.
Ham is a healthy food that provides quality protein and fat.
With all this, I want to tell you that although we must be cautious, everything seems to point to probably the recommendations on the consumption of ham in pregnancy They are going to change. Scientific evidence is showing that the consumption of ham and toxoplamosis may not be related.
One of the keys, healing time. The more cured the ham is, the less risk of toxoplasmosis.
