Today is Isaac’s birthday, and to celebrate last night we took him to one of his favorite sushi restaurants in Quincy, MA.  During my pregnancy with him, I worked in Back Bay not far from a Japanese restaurant, where I’d often indulge in sushi platters for lunch, convinced that the more fish I ate, the smarter my child would be.  Truthfully, having never had a day of morning sickness for the whole 9-1/2 months of that pregnancy, I ate everything in sight, adhering only to the strict advisory against alcohol and caffeine.

I consumed not just raw fish, but all manners of seafood, cheeses, peanuts, and even steak tartare…but only prepared under the expert auspices of the dining room at the Ritz.

I take serious issue with the current food taboos for pregnant women, which would have one abstain from all of the above, and more.  Honey, of all things!  The purest food on the planet.  To avoid peanuts while pregnant would seem to increase the potential for allergens, not reduce them.  I’m not a physician, but I do know about the theory of vaccination.  Exposure to mild doses of disease innoculates us against them.  So why not the same for peanuts and other foods that have instead produced a veritable plague of food allergies among children whose mothers abstained from them during pregnancy.

Isaac loves sushi even more than I did then, and indulges in it often.  He also enjoys peanut butter sandwiches, meat cooked medium rare, milk, swordfish, cheeses, and honey.  No food allergies at all for that boy, and damn smart, too.

Happy birthday, my darling Omnivore!