Can you eat tartar sauce when pregnant?

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Hannah Weiss

Writer

Find out if it's safe to eat tartar sauce during pregnancy, plus precautions to take to keep you and your baby healthy.

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The official advice on eating tartar sauce in pregnancy

Good news! Shop-bought tartar sauce is safe to eat during pregnancy. Homemade tartar sauce is generally safe too, providing it has been made with British Lion eggs.

Tartar sauce is a delicious blend of mayonnaise, lemon juice, capers and mustard. Sometimes it's seasoned with herbs like tarragon and dill, and it often includes gherkins as well.

Shop-bought tartar sauce

Most shop-bought tartar sauces, including supermarket-own brands, will be made using mayonnaise. These tartar sauces are safe to eat during pregnancy because shop-bought mayonnaise is made with pasteurised eggs. Pasteurisation is a heat-treatment process designed to kill off any harmful bacteria that may cause food poisoning.

Homemade tartar sauce

Tartar sauce recipes sometimes include raw eggs. According to the NHS, raw eggs are not safe to eat during pregnancy unless they have the British Lion stamp.

This is because raw eggs can carry harmful salmonellae bacteria. While salmonella is unlikely to harm your growing baby, it can cause food poisoning and make you feel very unwell.

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Eggs with the British Lion stamp come from hens that have been vaccinated against salmonella, so the risk of food poisoning is extremely low. These eggs are safe to eat raw in recipes like tartar sauce.

If you're making tartar sauce at home, always use British Lion eggs. You can ask about this if you have tartar sauce at a restaurant too.

All the other ingredients in tartar sauce are perfectly safe to eat while you're pregnant.

Delicious fish recipes

Love fish? Why not try one of these great pregnancy-safe recipes?

• Fish pie
• Lime salmon
• Lemon sole
• Homemade fish and chips

The Day-by-Day Pregnancy Book: Count Down Your Pregnancy Day by Day by Dr Maggie Blott is packed full of advice from a team of experts to help guide you through your pregnancy from conception to birth. See more details here at Amazon.

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Looking for more pregnancy diet info? Check out our articles below, or swap tips with other mums-to-be in our forum.

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