Can I eat crab while pregnant?

The verdict

Cooked crab is safe. The NHS lists cooked shellfish, including prawns, crab, lobster, squid, mussels, scallops, clams and cockles, among foods that are safe to eat in pregnancy. The FDA places crab on its Best Choices list for low mercury, and names crab among the fish it considers even lower in mercury.

There are two qualifications, and they are the reason this page exists separately from the general shellfish advice.

The first is brown crab meat. The NHS states that brown crab meat contains cadmium, a substance that can affect bones and kidneys if you have too much of it, and that there are no maximum amounts recommended for white crab meat or other types of shellfish. That is a specific caution about one part of one animal, and it is easy to miss.

The second is temperature. Cold, ready-to-eat crab from a chilled counter is a ready-to-eat food, and the FSA lists cooked shellfish among the ready-to-eat foods in which listeria is more commonly found. FSANZ puts chilled ready-to-eat seafood in its higher-risk group, with freshly cooked or thoroughly reheated to steaming hot as the safer alternative.

Brown meat, white meat and dressed crab

A crab yields two very different foods. White meat comes from the claws and legs: lean, mild, and the part sold as picked white crab meat. Brown meat comes from the body cavity, is soft and rich, and is where the animal concentrates minerals, including cadmium.

Cadmium is a heavy metal that accumulates in the kidneys over a lifetime. The NHS caution is not pregnancy-specific in the way the mercury advice is; it is general advice that applies to everyone, but it is worth applying carefully while pregnant because it is one of the few quantitative notes the NHS attaches to shellfish at all.

Dressed crab, the presentation where the shell is filled with both meats, is mostly brown meat by volume. Crab pate, potted crab and crab bisque are usually brown-meat heavy. A crab sandwich or a crab salad made with picked white meat is not.

The practical reading: white crab meat carries no recommended maximum, so ordinary portions are fine. Brown meat is worth eating occasionally rather than regularly, and dressed crab is not the dish to eat weekly.

Crab sticks and imitation crab

Imitation crab, sold as crab sticks, seafood sticks or surimi, contains no crab in most cases. It is made from white fish, usually pollock, minced into a paste, mixed with starch, egg white and flavouring, formed and then cooked.

Because it is cooked during manufacture and then chilled, it is a ready-to-eat refrigerated food. That places it in the same category as other chilled ready-to-eat seafood rather than in the raw category: it is not raw fish, and it does not carry the mercury question, since pollock is on the FDA's Best Choices list.

What it does carry is the ordinary chilled ready-to-eat handling requirement. The FSA advises keeping such food below 5C, eating it within four hours of leaving the fridge, or two hours on a very warm day, always eating or freezing by the use-by date, and using opened packs within two days if no other instruction is given. FSANZ's advice for people at higher risk is that it is safest to eat only freshly prepared food.

Crab sticks in a California roll deserve a note, because sushi is where most people meet them. A California roll made with cooked imitation crab is not raw fish sushi, and ACOG states that cooked sushi is safe. It is still chilled ready-to-eat food, so buy it fresh, keep it cold and eat it promptly.

Cooking crab properly

The FDA's doneness guidance for shellfish is visual. Cook shrimp, lobster and scallops until they reach their appropriate colour, with the flesh becoming opaque and milky white. Crab flesh behaves the same way; the shell turns from mottled to bright orange-red and the meat turns from translucent to opaque and firm.

For reheating cold cooked crab, the standard is the same as for any other ready-to-eat food: steaming hot right through, which FSANZ specifies as 75C. Crab meat folded into a hot gratin, a crab cake fried through, crab in a bisque brought to a simmer, and crab in a hot pasta sauce all clear it.

A cold crab salad, a crab and avocado starter, or a crab sandwich from a chilled counter do not. In the UK those are foods to be careful with rather than foods to avoid; in Australia they are in the higher-risk column; and the safer version of each is to heat the crab first, or to buy it fresh and eat it the same day.

Live crab, brown crab and shellfish toxins

Crab bought live and cooked at home is the freshest route and avoids the chilled storage question entirely. Cook it thoroughly.

Shellfish toxins are a separate hazard worth knowing about because heat does not fix them. The NHS notes shellfish can contain toxins, that the symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, numbness, breathing difficulties, memory loss, disorientation and abdominal pain, and that these toxins do not break down during cooking. This is why shellfish beds are monitored and closed when toxin levels rise, and it is a reason to buy crab from a proper supplier rather than to gather it yourself.

If you have already eaten some

Cooked crab needs no action at all. Cold dressed crab or a crab sandwich once is a low risk; listeriosis is rare, and NHS advice on foods that should have been avoided is that a small amount, if you did not become ill, is unlikely to affect your baby.

If you feel unwell soon after eating shellfish, with vomiting, diarrhoea, numbness or tingling, treat that as possible shellfish poisoning and seek advice the same day. NHS advice is to get help from 111 if you feel unwell after having food that should be avoided in pregnancy or if vomiting and diarrhoea last more than 48 hours.

For listeria, the window is longer. ACOG notes symptoms may appear up to two months afterwards, and lists fever, chills, muscle aches and upset stomach, with stiff neck, headache, confusion or loss of balance in more serious illness. Contact your midwife or GP and mention what you ate.

Where guidance differs

On cooked crab, not much. The NHS names it as safe, the FDA rates it a Best Choice, and neither sets a limit on white meat.

On cold ready-to-eat crab, the same split appears as with prawns: the UK allows it with a heating instruction, Australia and New Zealand list chilled ready-to-eat seafood as higher risk, and Ireland's HSE avoid list names clams, oysters, scallops, prawns and mussels but does not name crab, so its position on crab is simply not stated.

On brown meat, the UK is the only one of these authorities to publish a specific caution, and it is about cadmium rather than about pregnancy. It is still the most useful thing on this page, because it is the part almost nobody knows.