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Pregnant women are well aware that they're eating for two — after all, one mere mortal could never polish off an entire jar of pickles in a single sitting! Since what a mother-to-be eats is also what her unborn baby eats, good nutrition is absolutely vital during pregnancy, ensuring the healthy growth and development of the fetus. Equally as important is avoiding foods that could make you or your unborn baby sick. When a woman is pregnant, hormonal changes weaken her immune system, which puts both her and her unborn child's health at greater risk for illness if she is exposed to various bacteria. Bacteria-contaminated food does not taste or smell peculiar; if in doubt about whether a food is OK to eat, you should simply avoid it. Here's a quick rundown of foods to avoid when you're expecting:

Certain Meats and Cheeses

Because of their soft and porous surfaces, ready-to-eat meats and soft cheeses are vulnerable to contamination by a potent bacterium known as Listeria monocytogenes. Unlike many other bacteria, Listeria can grow at refrigeration temperatures of 40 degrees F or below (although it can be killed when heated at high temperatures). When eaten, Listeria causes the illness listeriosis, which causes flu-like symptoms including fever, chills, muscle aches, diarrhea and upset stomach. If the infection spreads to the nervous system, it can also result in headaches, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions. If Listeria is transmitted to the fetus, it can cause miscarriage, fetal death or the death of a newborn infant. To make matters worse, pregnant women are approximately 20 times more likely than other healthy adults to get sick from Listeria because of the weakened state of their immune system. Therefore, it's recommended that pregnant women completely avoid the following:

• Soft cheeses including Brie, feta, Camembert, blue-veined varieties and soft Mexican cheeses. (Hard cheeses and semisoft cheeses, such as cheddar and mozzarella, are OK to eat, as are cream cheese, cottage cheese and pasteurized processed cheese slices.)
• Deli meats and hot dogs, unless they are heated until steaming hot.
• Refrigerated meat spreads such as pate.
• Refrigerated smoked seafood such as lox (smoked salmon).
• Unpasteurized milk — the pasteurization process kills any harmful bacteria.

Raw and Undercooked Foods

These can harbor harmful bacteria, such as salmonella and E. coli, which can make even a completely healthy person with a normal immune system sick from food poisoning. Since pregnant women are even more susceptible and can easily pass the infection on to their unborn child, it's best to eat only thoroughly cooked foods. That means avoiding:

• Raw cookie dough. No tasting the batter!
• Caesar salad. There are raw eggs in the dressing.
• Mousse and other desserts that contain raw eggs.
• Sushi. Can you say raw fish?
• "Pink-in-the-middle" hamburgers. Order them well-done.
• Runny eggs. Both the yolk and the white — or the scrambled mixture of the two — should be firm, not watery.

Fish High in Mercury

Because of its newly developing nervous system, a fetus is especially sensitive to the toxic effects of mercury, and if a pregnant woman takes it in high doses, developmental delays in her child can result. For this reason, the Food and Drug Administration has advised that pregnant women limit fish consumption to 12 ounces per week. Since larger predator fish accumulate the most mercury, women should avoid them altogether during pregnancy. These include shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a stimulant that can easily pass from a mother to her developing baby via the placenta. The jury is still out on the safety of caffeine during pregnancy; some studies have shown that the risk of miscarriage and fetal growth retardation increases with caffeine levels above one cup, or 12 ounces, of coffee a day (that's a single "tall" drink at Starbucks), while others have shown no risk. Nevertheless, experts seem to agree that high caffeine intake (five or more cups per day) should be avoided during pregnancy. If you want to play it completely safe, doctors suggest forgoing your daily java jolt while trying to conceive and during pregnancy. If you're a devoted coffee drinker, your best bet is to slowly wean yourself off caffeine before you get pregnant. That way you'll avoid having to deal with any nasty withdrawal headaches on top of morning sickness! (The very smell of coffee might make you feel nauseous during the first trimester, though, so it may be easier to avoid than you think.) Keep in mind that there's nothing wrong with drinking decaf with milk — you get that yummy coffee flavor plus a good dose of calcium for both you and your growing baby.

Alcohol

When a pregnant mother drinks alcohol, it passes quickly through the placenta to her fetus. But the still-developing baby does not have the ability to break down the alcohol and flush it out of its system as quickly as the mom can. As a result, the alcohol level in the baby's blood can be even higher and remain elevated longer than the level in the mother''s blood. The result is interference in brain development. The March of Dimes recommends that pregnant women avoid all alcohol — including beer, wine, wine coolers and hard liquor — throughout their pregnancy. A 2001 study by researchers at Wayne State University in Detroit found that six- and seven-year-old children of mothers who had as little as one drink a week during pregnancy were more likely than children of nondrinkers to have behavioral problems, such as aggression and delinquency. Drinking four or five drinks daily (though, in some cases, even less) causes fetal alcohol syndrome, which results in lifelong mental and growth retardation. And while some other countries and cultures believe that a limited amount of alcohol is fine for moms-to-be and babies, the bottom line is that abstaining from alcohol definitively has been proven safe.

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