When you’re pregnant, Subway might seem like a quick and healthy choice for you and your baby. But is it something that you should be eating, and are their things on their menu that their sandwich artists shouldn’t make you?
No one can deny that Subway is quick, and relatively cheap considering what you’re getting, but it is still a fast food chain, and therefore should be avoided entirely while you’re pregnant. Even though Subway has positioned itself as the healthy alternative to places like McDonald’s and Burger King, it is still a big business and as such is only concerned with one thing: the bottom line.
What does this mean to you as a pregnant mother-to-be? That the executives that make the big decisions at Subway are not altogether too concerned if their food is good for pregnant mothers, and therefore you shouldn’t pass responsibility onto them. You are the gateway to what enters your body during this time, and you have to use your own judgement to make the right decisions.
Can I Eat at Subway While Pregnant? Answer: Not Recommended
Fast food, no matter how it’s presented, is full of preservatives and low-grade ingredients. It may look like it’s fresh and like it’s top of the line stuff, but it’s not. In order to cut costs these food companies will award contracts to the lowest bidder that can supply them with food at the lowest cost, but that still looks good enough to eat.
You have to think about stuff like this when you’re pregnant. Maybe when you’re not pregnant Subway is one of your favorite places to eat, and it doesn’t really matter how fresh or natural the ingredients are. But when you’re worrying about the growing baby inside you, you should take these matters into consideration. You’ll be passing along the preservatives and additives and low-grade God knows what they put in there onto your baby. Maybe it will effect their development, maybe it won’t. Do you want to take the chance?
Listeria Concerns
This is a bacteria that is sometimes found in lunch meats and deli meats and also in heavily processed foods. It can put you at increased risk of miscarrying, and other complications during your pregnancy. It’s just not worth the risk of contaminating yourself and your baby, not that Subway inherently contains this bacteria, but compared to cooking your own food, and buying your own ingredients, the odds are much better if you just stay on your own.
Making Sandwiches at Home
The good news is that you can replicate most of what Subway offers at home. The ingredients they have are not a secret, and since you get to watch them make your sandwich right in front of you, you can simply go to the store and buy your favorite ingredients fresh, making sure that you select vegetables that are ripe and meats that have been properly prepared. Also, you’ll likely have enough left over to have a sandwich the next day.
Is Subway Even Healthy?
Subway made it their goal to open more restaurants than McDonald’s and they achieved this over a year ago. Many people perceive them as a healthier alternative to burgers and fries, and it’s hard to argue based on fat and caloric content. But the quality of ingredients they use has to be questioned. The beef that they use for their roast beef looks off, especially when compared to organic roast beef you can buy in an upscale supermarket. Their meatballs also taste low-grade. Their chicken breasts look like they’ve been processed, stored, frozen, unfrozen, nuked, and reheated so many times it can’t be considered food any more.
The end result is you get a sandwich that looks like a sandwich, but only because the sum of all its parts is supposed to look and be edible. If you deconstruct it, and follow the trail back to how the ingredients were manufactured, you probably wouldn’t want to eat it. So even though they haven’t done a 30-day documentary on eating Subway by itself like they did with McDonald’s, and even though Jarrod claims he lost all that weight eating Subway, it can’t be considered true health food, and should be avoided with the rest of the lot while you’re expecting.
