Can I eat halloumi while pregnant?

The verdict

Yes. Halloumi is named directly by the NHS on its list of pasteurised soft cheeses that are safe to eat in pregnancy, in the same line as cottage cheese, cream cheese, mozzarella, feta, paneer, ricotta, mascarpone and burrata.

It is also, in practice, the easiest cheese on this whole list to be confident about, because almost nobody eats it cold. Grilled, fried, griddled or barbecued halloumi has been cooked, and cooked cheese is safe under every national guideline, including the stricter Australian and New Zealand one.

The thing worth watching with halloumi is not bacteria. It is salt.

Why halloumi is a low-risk cheese

Halloumi is a brined, unripened cheese, traditionally Cypriot, made from sheep's and goat's milk or a blend with cow's milk. The curd is heated and then held in a salt brine. It has no rind, no surface mould and no ageing process in which the acidity drifts back towards neutral.

Those three features are exactly what the UK guidance uses to separate safe soft cheeses from the ones that need cooking. Mould-ripened cheeses such as brie and camembert are risky because the ripening mould raises the pH and the cheese stays wet and cold for weeks. Halloumi does none of that. It is salted heavily enough to be genuinely inhospitable, and its cooking behaviour, holding its shape at frying temperature rather than melting, comes from the way the curd proteins are set.

Pasteurisation is still the label to check. Supermarket halloumi in the UK, Ireland, the US, Australia and New Zealand is made from pasteurised milk and will say so. Halloumi bought loose from a market or brought back from a trip may not be, and unpasteurised cheese is on every country's list of things to cook before eating.

Halloumi, paneer and squeaky cheese

Paneer is named separately on the same NHS safe list. It is an acid-set Indian fresh cheese, unbrined and unsalted, and behaves the same way for these purposes: pasteurised, no rind, safe, and normally cooked into a curry anyway.

Products sold as grilling cheese, squeaky cheese or Cypriot-style cheese are usually halloumi under another name. Check for pasteurised milk on the ingredients and treat them identically.

Cooking it settles the Australian question

Food Standards Australia New Zealand does not name halloumi. Its higher-risk table covers soft, semi-soft and surface-ripened cheeses as a category, naming brie, camembert, mozzarella, ricotta, feta and blue, and its safer alternatives are hard cheeses, pasteurised cream cheese, plain cottage cheese and baked soft cheeses cooked to an internal temperature of 75C.

Halloumi is firm rather than soft, so it is arguable whether it belongs in that row at all. The argument does not need settling, because a slice of halloumi griddled until it is golden and squeaking has an internal temperature well past 75C. FSANZ's own reheating advice uses 75C as the steaming-hot threshold.

If you are following Australian or New Zealand guidance and want the simplest possible answer: cook it, which is how it is nearly always served.

The one preparation to think about is cold halloumi in a salad or a mezze platter that was cooked earlier and then chilled. That is a cooked food that has become a chilled ready-to-eat food, and it belongs under the general rules: keep it below 5C, eat it within a day, and do not leave it standing at room temperature. The FSA advises eating ready-to-eat food within four hours of leaving the fridge, or two hours on a very warm day.

The real issue is salt

Halloumi is one of the saltiest cheeses commonly sold. It is stored in brine, and much of that salt stays in the cheese. A single 100g pack can carry a substantial share of an adult's recommended daily salt intake, and grilling does not remove it.

NHS pregnancy diet advice is to eat a healthy balanced diet with dairy or dairy alternatives included, choosing lower-fat and lower-sugar options where possible, and general UK healthy eating advice caps adult salt intake at 6g a day. High salt intake is a blood pressure issue, and blood pressure is monitored closely through pregnancy, which is reason enough to keep halloumi as a component rather than a base.

Practical ways to take the edge off: soak the slices in cold water for twenty to thirty minutes before cooking, which draws out a noticeable amount of salt; serve it with unsalted starch and plenty of vegetables rather than with olives, capers and cured meat; and skip added salt in whatever it is served with.

Halloumi is a reasonable source of protein and calcium, both of which matter in pregnancy, so there is no reason to cut it out. It just is not an everyday cheese.

Halloumi fries, wraps and takeaways

Halloumi fries and breaded halloumi from a restaurant or takeaway are deep-fried to order, which puts them comfortably past any temperature threshold. The usual takeaway caveats apply instead: sauces and dressings that might contain raw egg, salad garnishes that may not have been washed, and food that has been held warm rather than served hot.

A halloumi wrap where the cheese is hot and the salad is cold is fine; the NHS advice about salad is to wash salad vegetables thoroughly before eating, which is a point about home preparation and about pre-packed salads kept chilled and eaten by their use-by date.

If you have eaten it cold, or unpasteurised

Cold pasteurised halloumi is within guidance in the UK, Ireland and the US, so there is nothing to do.

Unpasteurised halloumi eaten cold is a low risk rather than a high one, and the NHS's general position is that a small amount of a food that should have been avoided, if you did not become ill, is unlikely to affect your baby. Listeriosis is rare.

Because it can take weeks to appear, keep an eye out. ACOG notes symptoms may show as late as two months afterwards and lists fever, chills, muscle aches, diarrhoea or upset stomach, with stiff neck, headache, confusion or loss of balance in more serious illness. Contact your midwife or GP the same day if any appear, and tell them what you ate.

Where guidance differs

Barely at all, which makes halloumi unusual among soft cheeses. The NHS names it as safe. The FDA and ACOG restrict only raw-milk cheeses and queso fresco-type cheeses, neither of which describes pasteurised halloumi. Ireland's HSE avoid list covers unpasteurised dairy, mould-ripened cheese and blue cheese, and does not mention it.

The only country where the classification is even debatable is Australia, and cooking removes the debate. That is a rare position for a cheese to be in, and it is why halloumi is one of the more useful things to have in the fridge if you are trying to eat well while avoiding a long list of other cheeses.