Pregnancy food safety and the Avo app: your questions answered

A pregnancy food and tracking app built around one question: can I eat this? It rates 365 foods Safe, Caution or Avoid with the reason, scans a plate, a product or a restaurant menu, tracks iron, folate, calcium, DHA and protein against trimester targets, and follows your pregnancy week by week with a kick counter, checklists and a birth plan. See all features.

Free to download, with the food library, the week-by-week, the trackers, the kick counter and the contraction timer free to use, plus a limited number of free scans. Premium, at $29.99 a year or $3.99 a week in the US, unlocks unlimited scanning, the full recipe library and the full guides and checklists. Prices vary by country.

Both. The download page sends you to the right store. The app runs in 19 languages, and this site publishes the food library and guides in the same 19.

Avo Parenting, a small team that also makes Avo Starting Solids. Our food guidance is compiled from the published positions of the NHS, the FDA, ACOG, EFSA and WHO by an editorial team; it is not reviewed by clinicians, and we say so on our About page. It is general guidance, not medical advice, and your midwife or doctor comes first.

Those apps are built for the week, the community and the registry, and answer a food question with an article. Avo answers it with a verdict on the specific food, plate or menu in front of you, and counts the nutrients. Most people use one of each; our pregnancy apps roundup compares them row by row.

The NHS, the FDA and the European agencies agree on most of the list: raw or undercooked meat, raw fish and shellfish, unpasteurised milk and cheese, mould-ripened and blue soft cheese, liver, high-mercury fish and alcohol. They differ on runny eggs, cold deli meats and some cheeses. Our complete list shows the three side by side.

Most cheese, yes. Hard cheeses and pasteurised soft cheeses such as mozzarella, feta, halloumi and paneer are fine. Mould-ripened soft cheese such as brie and camembert, and blue cheese, are avoided unless cooked until steaming hot; raw-milk cheese is avoided in most countries. The cheese guide goes cheese by cheese.

Different food supplies and different regulators. The US allows pasteurised soft cheese where the UK is cautious about mould-ripened rinds; the UK allows runny Lion-stamped eggs where the US does not; France and Germany warn specifically about raw-milk cheese. Avo shows the difference on the food's page rather than picking one country silently.

A bacterium that can grow in chilled foods and is far more dangerous in pregnancy than outside it. It is the reason behind the rules on soft cheese, cold deli meats, smoked fish and pre-made salads. The listeria guide covers the foods, the symptoms and what to do if you ate something.

The risk from a single exposure is usually low, but it is worth knowing the symptoms to watch for and when to call your midwife or doctor. Our guide on what to do if you ate something you shouldn't walks through it calmly.

Take a photo of the plate, the front of a packet, the ingredients panel or the barcode. Avo identifies the food or product, rates it Safe, Caution or Avoid with the reason, and lists the nutrients it adds to your day. Tap Log to count it. See the food scanner page.

Photograph a restaurant menu and Avo sorts the dishes into Best Picks for You and Better to Skip, each with a reason, reading the descriptions for terms such as rare, raw and unpasteurised. See the menu scanner page.

A barcode or an ingredients panel reads reliably. A photo of a plate or a menu is an estimate of what is there. Avo tells you when a label was only partly readable and asks for the back of the pack. No scan can see whether a dish was cooked through or how long it sat out.

A limited number per day on the free tier; the app shows how many you have left. Premium unlocks unlimited scans.

Scan photos are processed to produce the result. What is kept, and for how long, is set out in our privacy policy, and you can delete your data from the app at any time.

Iron, folate, calcium, DHA and protein on the home screen, plus choline, iodine, fibre, energy and macros in the full view, and water. Targets change by trimester. See the nutrient tracker page.

Avo uses 27 mg a day as the typical pregnancy target. Red meat, lentils, beans, fortified cereals and dark leafy greens are the main sources, and vitamin C in the same meal helps absorption. Our iron-rich foods guide lists them.

The NHS, ACOG and EFSA all land at around 200 mg a day, roughly two mugs of instant coffee or one large filter coffee. Tea, cola, chocolate and energy drinks count too. The caffeine guide has the numbers per drink.

Small, frequent, bland and cold tends to work in the first trimester, and the nutrients can catch up later. Our guide on what to eat when nothing sounds good has practical ideas.

500 pregnancy recipes filtered by trimester and dietary need, with every ingredient carrying its own Safe, Caution or Avoid rating. The full library is part of premium.

For each of 42 weeks: your baby's size, length and weight range, the development milestones, what you might feel, and the nutrient to focus on. See the week by week page, or read a real pregnancy's weekly journal here.

Use the due date calculator with your last period, conception date, IVF transfer date or scan. Your ultrasound-based date takes precedence if they differ, and you can change the date in the app.

Yes. The kick counter appears from week 28 on the Baby tab and keeps a history; the contraction timer is for the end of the pregnancy. Daily logging of mood, symptoms and weight shows as monthly trends.

Ten checklists for the stages of pregnancy, including baby shopping, prenatal appointments and the hospital bag, and a birth plan you can fill in, save and share with your partner or care team.

An account lets your data follow you between devices and keeps your log if you change phone. The privacy policy explains what is collected.

From the app's settings, or by following the steps on our delete account page. Deletion removes your account and its data as described there.

Through the contact page. We read every message, and feedback about a food's rating goes to the editorial team.