Comments on: Getting Pregnant in Japan – Part Five: Something Fishy About Mercury Levels?

By: Tobias

Tobias — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:18:15 +0000

I found this site while looking for information on raw eggs and pregnancy. My wife is Japanese and seven weeks pregnant. She’s craving tamago-gohan (raw egg over rice). I was telling her that in the West pregnant women are discouraged from eating most raw foods, including fish and egg.

She looked this up online in Japanese and found dozens references to heavy consumption of raw egg by pregnant women. Also, sushi was never taken off the menu, except in that she’s seldom in a state to travel due to almost continual morning sickness.

So, I’m not going to keep her from eating what she wants, provided that she buys the best eggs available from local farms.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:59:37 +0000

I think there are two major factors here. One :
Japanese diet is generally low calorie, and low on nutritiens like calcium, iron, vitamins D, F, K, E and anything that comes from body fat. Moreover, people don’t care about it, don’t take vitamins and do regular diet during pregnancy.
Typical diet in Europe or in the US has much higher calorie, higher on calcium, iron and anything fatty, and moms do not make diet to loose weight during pregnancy.

So in Japan, low vitamin and low iron etc diet is much bigger problem for pregnant moms, and may have easily recognizable effects on the babies, while problems from mercury are less obvious.

The second factor:
The Japanese, once are costumer are very illogical in their needs and decisions. If she buys this book she wants to read what she wants to read, and not advice. IT is true for many other people around the word, but I see it particularly obvious in Japan in many service or product based business. As a result, the good (marketable) advice is that “yes, you can drink, you can smoke and you can eat fish”. Off course the first two is so obviously wrong that no one can market it openly, but a good writer can dress up the third.

Off:
In India and in Thai people don’t feed their babies with spicy food and mother themselves refrain from them during pregnancy. Common sense can work in other countries.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:22:32 +0000

Interesting, in NZ pregnant women are generally advised to avoid all shellfish (cooked or raw) due to the risk of listeria whcih can have very severe implications for the foetus, but here in Japan no one seems to have heard of it. But then again, they do eat oysters in summer here (which to me is an absolute no!).

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:02:09 +0000

You really should stop saying “the West”. You’d never call Norway and Italy the same thing if you weren’t talking about Japan, right? Contrary to what the kanji textbooks say, “west” is not the opposite of “Japan”.

By: Sofa

Sofa — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:42:28 +0000

Given that the missus (Japanese) completely went off fish during her “tsuwari” (morning sickness) period, we never really had major discussions on the pros & cons of eating fish early on. BUT, she is a big sushi fan (I like it but don’t really go crazy over it) and it was quite pleasing to hear that she had done her research and was quite concerned about the mercury in fish and decided to stay away from sushi and sashimi as much as possible.

I’d say during the 9 (10 if you’ve been converted) month period, we would have had sushi on about 3 occasions, treating it as something like a special treat as all husbands like to do for their wives from time to time.

Like alcohol during pregnancy, everyone has their own opinion, but at the end of the day the key word is moderation.

By: pork chop

pork chop — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:28:45 +0000

I just found out that my wife is pregnant. We had a huge feed of sushi at one of those places with no sign. Splashed out to celebrate the pregnancy. Very awesome. Haven’t had O-toro like that since my Shukatsu days.

Didn’t really think about the mercury though….oops. After reading this article, I had a flashback of gnarled joints and dribbling dudes in wheelchairs from that visit in Minamata.

By: Mr V

Mr V — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:55:04 +0000

Judging from the date in the original post, and this latest one, his baby has been born. I think the stress of having a pregnant wife stopped his plans for writing these while the pregnancy was actually happening! Anyway, this is a good reference for me. I have one child, but we are about to have another. Will show the wife, and let you know how it goes.

By: richard

richard — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:04:11 +0000

wait till the baby’s born…then the real superstitions, wives tales, and folklore kicks in.

good luck!

By: puri

puri — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:05:05 +0000

Off the topic but, from my direct experience, pregnant mothers (and sick people) in Thailand are advised not to eat spicy food.