What do you mean I can't eat that?!?!

In response to the good Doc's reply to one of my recent posts...I have decided to share with you my current dietary restrictions. Now, keep in mind that food is one of my great joys in life, and you'll have a pretty good picture of how this whole pregnancy thing is working out for me. The list includes:
1. Hotdogs. Apparently hotdogs contain nitrates. Nitrates are bad for you, or so they tell me. Now, I've been eating hotdogs my whole life and have yet to notice any ill effects from it, and I figure that if I cover my hotdog with relish, sport peppers, onions, ketchup and musturd I'm cancelling out the bad effects right? Not so much.
2. Lunch meat. Lunch meat=listeria=bad ass bacteria= a child who looks like William Shatner, has bad breath, and/or other equally hideous deformities. Who'd want that (unless you were William Shatner's mother)? Word on the street is that you can eat lunch meat if, and only if, you heat it to steaming first...which completely wilts the lettuce and makes the mayonaise disgusting...yummy.
3. Caffeine. Caffeine will give your fetus ADHD or cause it to have a grossly misshapen head according to the nosy/ignorant woman in QuikTrip this morning. How is what I'm drinking any of your business beyotch? A disclaimer to this is that you can have some caffeine, but only in moderation. Praise Jesus, they don't expect me to go cold turkey. (Cause we've already seen that I can't have that.) Let me just add here that you would just not believe the number of foods that have caffeine in them, including my beloved chocolate...
4. Raw anything. Including medium cooked steaks, sushi, and that entire Raw Foods diet. This one's pretty self explanatory and I don't miss any of this crap anyway. It's awful hard to miss something you didn't eat before.
5. Booze. Margaritas, mai tais, rum runners, pina coladas, beer, wine...It's all gone. My liquor cabinet is getting really dusty. Oh well, just think how strong all that stuff will be after it ages for another five months.
6. Aspartame. Yep, the artificial sweetner is bad for your fetus. It causes cancer in laboratory rats, but then again so does anything when you mainline enough of it. This shit is in EVERYTHING, including sweet, sweet sugar free Kool-Aid, fat free yougurt, diet soda, and pretty much the entire aisle of low fat goodies at the grocery store.
7. Ibuprofen. My wonder drug of choice causes birth defects. Not a good thing considering I have almost daily headaches that the Tylenol that I am allowed to take barely touches.

Yep, that pretty much sums up the don't eat this list for now. I'm sure that as I progress I'll learn even more things that I'm not allowed to ingest. So tonight, when you're drinking your after work glass of wine and cooking your medium rare steak while smoking your cigarette and telling your significant other to be sure to add coffee beans to the grocery list, think of me.