Is soft cheese safe while breastfeeding?

The verdict

Yes. Of all the foods you gave up in pregnancy, this is the one you can pick back up with the least hesitation, and the reason is worth understanding rather than just accepting.

Brie, camembert, chevre with a white rind, Danish blue, gorgonzola, roquefort and cheese made from unpasteurised milk are all on the NHS list of foods to avoid or cook thoroughly in pregnancy. None of them appears on any breastfeeding restriction list published by the NHS, the CDC or the HSE. The HSE states it as plainly as it can be stated: there is no need to exclude any food while you are breastfeeding, apart from limiting certain seafood. The CDC says generally, women do not need to limit or avoid specific foods while breastfeeding.

The cheese counter reopens.

Why the rule was about pregnancy specifically

The organism is Listeria monocytogenes, and everything about the pregnancy advice follows from one property: it crosses the placenta.

Maternal listeriosis is often mild. The NHS describes it as causing no symptoms or only mild symptoms for a few days in most people, typically a high temperature, aches, chills, nausea or diarrhoea. What made it a pregnancy emergency was never the illness in the mother. It was that the bacterium could reach the fetus directly through the placenta, and the NHS states that listeriosis in pregnancy carries a risk of miscarriage or stillbirth.

Once the placenta is gone, that route is gone. And listeria does not have a replacement route through milk. Neither the NHS nor the CDC lists breastfeeding or lactation among the groups at higher risk of serious problems from listeriosis. The NHS names anyone who is pregnant, newborn babies, people with a condition or treatment that weakens their immune system, and older people. The CDC names pregnant women, adults aged 65 or older, and people with weakened immune systems. Breastfeeding appears on neither list, and no guidance from either body asks a breastfeeding mother to change what cheese she eats.

The general principle behind this is set out by La Leche League GB, which notes that if a mother were to develop food poisoning from inadequately washed ingredients this would not pass to her baby via her breastmilk, though it could be passed on by contact contamination. In other words: the food-poisoning organisms that dominate pregnancy advice are gut and bloodstream problems for you, not milk problems for your baby. Hand hygiene is what protects your baby, which is why the HSE puts washing your hands before every feed at the top of its breastfeeding hygiene advice.

The one microbiological exception

There is a single organism in this food group that does appear on a breastfeeding list, and it is not listeria. The CDC includes untreated brucellosis among the reasons a mother should temporarily not breastfeed. Brucella is a raw-milk organism, and it is one of the historical reasons pasteurisation exists.

This is not a reason to avoid unpasteurised cheese. Brucellosis is rare in the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada and Australasia, and the CDC entry concerns a diagnosed, untreated infection in the mother, not a theoretical exposure. But it is the honest answer to the question of whether any cheese-related organism matters to breastfeeding, and it is worth knowing that if you were ever diagnosed with brucellosis you would need to speak to your doctor before continuing to feed.

How much is too much

There is no limit, because there is no dose-based rule to state. This is a category that was either in or out, and after birth it is in.

The relevant nutrition point runs the other way. Cheese is a concentrated source of calcium, protein and iodine, and iodine is one of only two nutrients the CDC says you actually need more of while breastfeeding, at 290 micrograms a day alongside 550 milligrams of choline. The NHS lists dairy among the food groups to include, noting that these contain calcium and are a source of protein. The CDC recommends an additional 330 to 400 kilocalories a day for well-nourished breastfeeding mothers, and the HSE an extra 300 to 500. A wedge of brie is a reasonable way to spend some of that.

If you are still nervous about it

Two things are worth separating. The first is safety, which is settled. The second is habit, which is not, and nine months of reading labels does not switch off on the day you give birth.

If you want to ease back in, the ordinary food hygiene rules that apply to everyone are enough: keep chilled ready-to-eat food cold, at 5C or below, eat it within four hours of taking it out of the fridge, observe use-by dates and use opened food within two days unless the packaging says otherwise. That is the NHS listeriosis advice for the general population, and it is now the only advice that applies to you.

The exception is your baby's own diet later on. Newborns are on the NHS higher-risk list for listeriosis, and that stays true. When you start solids, soft mould-ripened and blue cheeses and anything unpasteurised are a different conversation, and one to have with your health visitor rather than to settle from an adult food page.

Where guidance differs

It does not, and the way it does not is instructive. The uniformity here is not four bodies agreeing on a permission. It is four bodies not raising the subject at all.

The NHS breastfeeding diet page names no cheese restriction, lists dairy positively among the food groups, and confines its quantitative limits to fish and caffeine. The CDC's answer to the question should breastfeeding mothers avoid or limit any foods names only seafood and, optionally, caffeine. The HSE says there is no need to exclude any food apart from certain seafood. La Leche League GB treats the belief that certain foods always need to be avoided while breastfeeding as a myth.

Compare that with the pregnancy pages, where the NHS, the CDC, the FDA, Health Canada, FSANZ and New Zealand Food Safety all publish detailed and sometimes conflicting cheese rules. The contrast is the point. The pregnancy guidance is elaborate because the stakes were placental. The breastfeeding guidance is silent because the mechanism does not carry over.