Food · Shopping
Waitrose and M&S
Labels change. The back of the pack always outranks this page.
This page was written out of three vault files: Waitrose and M&S: the shopping listAbsolutely avoid: the aisle cardFoods: the full reasoning
The four label habits that do ninety per cent of the work
- Grams of protein per pack, not the front-of-pack flash. “High protein” is a regulated claim based on the percentage of energy from protein, so a low-calorie product can carry it with very few actual grams. Read the nutrition panel.
- “Greek yoghurt” versus “Greek-style yoghurt”. Strained Greek yoghurt is about 10 g of protein per 100 g. Greek-style can be a third of that. This one habit is worth more than any single product on this page.
- On cheese, look for rind and moisture, not the word “pasteurised”. UK guidance keys on a mould-ripened rind and a wet, low-acid texture. Unpasteurised parmesan is fine; pasteurised brie is not. This is the opposite of American advice.
- On chilled ready-to-eat food, check the use-by, keep it cold and eat it early. UK listeria cases cluster in refrigerated, long-shelf-life, ready-to-eat foods far more than in the famous cheeses.
Read the evidence: Waitrose and M&S: the shopping listAbsolutely avoid: the aisle cardProtein pairing
1. Proteins: the core basket
Chilled, zero preparation
| What to look for | Where | Protein | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ready-boiled, peeled eggs, chilled snack packs | Both, food-to-go chiller | ~6.5 g each | The highest-value zero-preparation item in the shop. Keep chilled, eat within the use-by. |
| Waitrose Egg & Spinach Protein Pot | Waitrose food-to-go | ~12-14 g | Cold, low odour, no preparation. |
| M&S Egg and Spinach Snack Pot | M&S food-to-go | ~12-14 g | The direct equivalent. |
| M&S Edamame Bean Pot | M&S snack pots | ~10 g | Near-odourless. An excellent nausea-mode protein. |
| Marinated king prawn pots, Eat Well range | M&S food-to-go | ~15-20 g | Cooked prawns are fine in pregnancy. Keep chilled. |
| Cooked chicken breast slices or pieces, plain | Both | ~26 g / 100 g | Cold cooked sliced meat is fine under UK guidance if properly chilled and in date. |
| Cooked ham slices, plain | Both | ~11 g / 60 g | Cooked, not raw-cured. A different rule from prosciutto. |
| Plain cooked and chilled king prawns, loose pack | Both | ~20 g / 100 g | Cooked shellfish is fine. |
| Firm tofu, plain block | Both, chilled vegetarian or world foods | ~14 g / 100 g | Edible cold straight from the pack. The best-kept nausea secret on this page. |
| Tempeh | Waitrose chilled vegetarian; more limited at M&S | ~19 g / 100 g | |
| Chilled soups with a protein base: lentil, chicken, bean | Both | varies | Fine, but reheat to steaming. The smell is the problem here, not the safety. |
Read the evidence: Waitrose and M&S: the shopping listProtein pairing
Ambient cupboard staples
| What to look for | Protein | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Tinned tuna in spring water | ~25 g / 100 g drained | Maximum four medium cans a week. |
| Tinned sardines, mackerel, pink or red salmon | ~19-21 g / tin | Counts toward two oily-fish portions a week. Tinned smoked fish is fine. It is retort-processed at high temperature. |
| Tinned butter beans, cannellini, chickpeas, lentils | ~12-15 g / 200 g drained | Rinse and eat cold with olive oil. Waitrose stocks these under Essential Waitrose and Cooks’ Ingredients; M&S under its core grocery range. |
| Baked beans | ~10 g / 200 g | Beans on toast is already a paired carbohydrate. |
| Peanut butter and almond butter | ~7 g / 30 g | No-palm-oil and no-added-sugar versions exist at both. Also sold in single-serve sachets, ideal for the handbag and bedside kits. |
| Plain nuts and seeds: almonds, peanuts, cashews, walnuts, pumpkin seeds | ~5-7 g / 30 g | Nuts are explicitly fine in pregnancy; the old avoidance advice was withdrawn. Waitrose Duchy Organic Mixed Nuts is a confirmed line. |
| Roasted chickpea and roasted broad bean snack packs | ~6 g / 30 g | Ambient, sealed, savoury. Bedside-box material. |
| Oatcakes and rye crispbread | ~2 g each | The carbohydrate half. Duchy Organic Original Oaten Biscuits is a confirmed Waitrose line. |
| Long-life milk cartons, single-serve | ~7 g / 200 ml | Ambient, drinkable protein for the bedside kit. |
| Microwave rice and grain pouches | ~5-8 g | The carbohydrate. Pair with edamame, tofu, chicken or tinned fish. |
| Nutritional yeast flakes | ~5 g / 10 g | Vegan B12 fortification, plus a savoury hit for pasta. |
Read the evidence: Waitrose and M&S: the shopping listProtein pairing
Dairy chiller
| What to look for | Protein | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Strained Greek yoghurt, 0% or 5%, plain, in a large tub and single pots | ~17 g / 170 g | The single most important item on this list. Buy both formats: the tub for home, the pots for the bag. Confirm the label says Greek yoghurt, not Greek-style. |
| Skyr, plain | ~16 g / 150 g | |
| Cottage cheese, plain | ~11 g / 100 g | Bland, cold, no preparation. The nausea workhorse. |
| Quark | ~12 g / 100 g | |
| Pasteurised kefir or drinking yoghurt | ~8 g / 250 ml | Unpasteurised kefir is out. |
| Whole or semi-skimmed milk | ~7 g / 200 ml | |
| Fortified soya milk | ~7 g / 200 ml | Soya, not oat and not almond. Those are close to zero protein. |
| High-protein soya yoghurt | ~9 g / 150 g | Check the panel. Plain coconut and oat yoghurts are close to zero protein. |
Read the evidence: Waitrose and M&S: the shopping listProtein pairing
Eggs
✅ Buy any box, then check the shell for the red British Lion stamp. Since October 2017 the FSA has confirmed that British Lion eggs can be eaten raw or runny in pregnancy, and over ninety per cent of UK eggs carry the mark. Both retailers’ own-label hen eggs are standard UK retail eggs, but verify the Lion mark on the box or shell rather than assuming. The exemption is specific to that scheme.
⚠️ Duck, goose and quail eggs must be cooked thoroughly. The Lion exemption does not extend to them.
Read the evidence: Foods: the full reasoningAbsolutely avoid: the aisle card
2. Cheese: precise, because this is where people get it wrong
The UK rule is moisture, acidity and rind. It is not pasteurisation.
✅ Buy freely
- Hard cheeses, including unpasteurised ones: cheddar, parmesan, pecorino, gruyère, manchego, comté, gouda, red leicester. Yes, the unpasteurised parmesan on the Waitrose cheese counter is fine.
- Pasteurised soft cheeses with no rind and no mould: cottage cheese, cream cheese, mozzarella, feta, paneer, ricotta, mascarpone, halloumi, burrata, processed cheese spreads and triangles.
- Mini wax-wrapped cheese portions. Both retailers stock branded and own-label versions. Sealed, tolerant of a few hours out of the fridge, about 4.5 g of protein each. A handbag and bedside staple.
- Plain goats’ cheese in log or crumbly form, pasteurised, with no white rind.
- Any cheese cooked until steaming hot all the way through: baked camembert, brie in a toastie, blue cheese melted into a sauce. This is a real permission, not a technicality.
⚠️ Do not buy to eat cold
- Mould-ripened soft cheeses with a white rind: brie, camembert, chèvre with rind, pasteurised or not. The rind de-acidifies the cheese as it ripens, which is what makes it hospitable to listeria.
- Soft blue-veined cheeses: roquefort, gorgonzola, Danish blue.
- Stilton is genuinely ambiguous in NHS-published material: some pages group it with the blue cheeses to be careful with, others with the safe hard cheeses. Treat it as a cook-it cheese, or ask the midwife. Do not let a forum settle it.
- Anything unpasteurised that is soft: milk, cream, yoghurt, butter, ice cream.
Both columns: read the evidence: Foods: the full reasoningAbsolutely avoid: the aisle card
3. Ready meals, food-to-go and meal deals
Hot food cooked to order or reheated until steaming is essentially never the listeria problem. Chilled ready-to-eat food with a long refrigerated shelf life is. That single sentence reorders this whole category.
✅ Good, protein-adequate and safe
| Category | Note |
|---|---|
| Chilled ready meals reheated until piping hot throughout: curries, chilli, cottage pie, bolognese, dal, chicken dishes | Fine when heated properly. Check the protein panel: a lot of pasta-and-sauce ready meals are 12 g of protein against 70 g of carbohydrate, which is a naked-carb meal in a black tray. Aim for 20 g of protein or more. |
| Frozen fish fillets, chicken and meat portions | Cook from frozen. No defrosting-fridge smell and no use-by anxiety. Genuinely underrated in the first trimester. |
| Rotisserie and hot-counter cooked chicken | Eat it hot, or chill it promptly and eat it cold within a day. |
| Chilled protein pots: egg, edamame, prawn | The core food-to-go answer. See the table above for the confirmed lines. |
| A meal deal chosen for the protein: Waitrose Food To Go, M&S Food on the Move | Pick the wrap or salad with a named cooked protein, and take the protein snack rather than the crisps. |
| Cooked-fish and cooked-vegetable sushi: cooked prawn, crab stick, tamago, avocado and cucumber maki, cooked salmon | Fine. |
| Soups with a bean, lentil or chicken base | Reheat to steaming. Pair with cheese on toast for the protein. |
| Bakery counter items | Fine, but they are pure naked carbohydrate. Never buy one without buying a protein in the same trip. |
Read the evidence: Waitrose and M&S: the shopping listAbsolutely avoid: the aisle cardProtein pairing
⚠️ Fine, but only with a condition
| Item | Condition |
|---|---|
| Pre-packed sandwiches, wraps and salads with meat, fish, egg or dairy | The NHS says be careful: keep chilled, eat well before the use-by, and never leave them in a warm bag or a hot car. A long chilled shelf life, ready to eat, with no kill step is listeria’s favourite niche. |
| Bagged salad leaves and prepared salad bowls | Wash them even if the pack says pre-washed, and keep them cold. |
| Pre-cut fruit pots, especially melon | Keep chilled and eat promptly. |
| Charcuterie and antipasti packs: salami, chorizo, prosciutto | The NHS position is be careful, not never. The risk is toxoplasma. Cook until steaming hot and it is fine. Pepperoni on a pizza has been in an oven. |
| Enoki mushrooms | Cook thoroughly. A recent NHS addition after international listeria outbreaks, and almost nobody knows it. |
| Chilled fresh juices and smoothies | Only if pasteurised. Unpasteurised raw juice is on the NHS avoid list, and some chilled cold-pressed juices are pressure-treated rather than pasteurised. Read the pack. Juice is also the worst naked carbohydrate she can drink for reactive hypoglycaemia. |
| Soft-serve ice cream and gelato counters | Commercial pasteurised mix is not banned, but a poorly maintained machine is a known listeria vector. A judgement call. |
| Coffee from the in-store café | The limit is 200 mg of caffeine a day. Independent testing found enormous variation between UK chains. A single medium cappuccino measured 325 mg at one of them. |
Read the evidence: Foods: the full reasoningAbsolutely avoid: the aisle card
4. Looks safe. Is not.
This is the section to actually memorise. Every item here is something a health-conscious shopper reaches for.
Cold-smoked, ready-to-eat salmon. The FSA and Food Standards Scotland specifically advise pregnant people to avoid ready-to-eat cold-smoked and cured fish, because smoking does not reach a listeria-killing temperature. The healthy-eating symbol does not screen for pregnancy.
Read the evidence · Absolutely avoid: the aisle cardSame reason. This is one of the most-missed items in a premium food hall.
Read the evidence · Absolutely avoid: the aisle cardListeria. Vegetable pâté counts, and it is the single most-missed item on the whole avoid list.
Read the evidence · Foods: the full reasoningPreformed vitamin A (retinol) is a proven human teratogen at high dose. A single portion of lamb’s liver can carry many times the daily upper limit.
Read the evidence · Supplements and herbsMould-ripened rind and soft blue veins, pasteurised or not.
Read the evidence · Foods: the full reasoningA very common premium-sandwich filling, and the cheese is uncooked in the sandwich.
Read the evidence · Foods: the full reasoningBoth retailers sell raw salmon and tuna sushi alongside the cooked lines, in the same chiller. The “it was frozen first” argument addresses parasites, not listeria, and listeria is what drives the NHS position.
Read the evidence · Foods: the full reasoningMince, poultry, pork, sausages and burgers must be cooked through. Whole cuts of beef and lamb only need the outside seared, but a sliced rare product has cut surfaces throughout.
Read the evidence · Foods: the full reasoningThe issue is lead, not infection.
Read the evidence · Foods: the full reasoningRetinol. This one gets bought precisely because it feels healthy.
Read the evidence · Supplements and herbsGlycyrrhizin inhibits the placental enzyme that keeps maternal cortisol away from the baby. Finnish cohort data at 500 mg a week or more found measurable cognitive and behavioural decrements in the children.
Read the evidence · Supplements and herbsListeria. But note: unpasteurised hard cheese is fine. The rule is texture, not pasteurisation.
Read the evidence · Foods: the full reasoning5. Iron
Iron matters because anaemia and first-trimester lightheadedness overlap heavily.
| Food | Iron type | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ Lean red meat: beef mince, steak, lamb | Haem, best absorbed | Cook mince and burgers through. Whole cuts only need the outside seared. |
| ✅ Cooked or roast beef slices | Haem | Zero-preparation iron plus about 16 g of protein per 60 g. |
| ✅ Tinned sardines and mackerel | Haem | Counts toward the oily-fish cap of two portions a week. |
| ✅ Cooked mussels, cockles and clams | Haem | Very high in iron, and cooked shellfish is fine. |
| ✅ Tinned lentils, chickpeas, butter beans, baked beans | Non-haem | Pair with vitamin C to absorb it. |
| ✅ Pumpkin seeds | Non-haem | Sprinkle them on the Greek yoghurt. |
| ✅ Dried apricots, figs, prunes | Non-haem | A naked carbohydrate on their own, so always with nuts or yoghurt. |
| ✅ Fortified breakfast cereals | Non-haem, fortified | Check the sugar, and eat it with milk and yoghurt. |
| ✅ Dark leafy greens: kale, spring greens, watercress | Non-haem | Wash thoroughly. |
| 🔴 Liver, the traditional “best iron food” | n/a | Off the list in pregnancy because of retinol. If someone recommends liver for iron, this is the correction. |
Read the evidence: Waitrose and M&S: the shopping listSupplements and herbs
Note the interaction with nausea: oral iron itself causes nausea and vomiting, and two-thirds of women in one prospective cohort reported that their sickness improved after stopping iron-containing supplements. Food iron is much gentler than supplement iron, but do not silently drop a prescribed supplement.
Read the evidence: Nausea
6. Oily fish, within the limits
Two portions of oily fish a week is a target, not just a ceiling. UK women systematically eat below the recommended amount, and oily fish is the main dietary source of DHA for the baby’s brain and retina. The realistic error is eating too little, not too much.
| Buy | Counts as | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ Tinned sardines, mackerel, pink or red salmon | One portion per tin | Cheapest and easiest, and also calcium from the soft bones plus iron. High odour, so not a bad-day food. |
| ✅ Frozen salmon, mackerel or trout fillets | One portion per fillet | Cook from frozen. No fridge smell and no use-by pressure. |
| ✅ Fresh salmon and trout fillets | One portion per fillet | Cook through. |
| ✅ Tinned smoked mackerel or smoked sardines | One portion | Fine. Retort-processed at high temperature. |
| ⚠️ Fresh tuna steak | Oily fish and the mercury cap | Maximum two fresh tuna steaks a week. |
| ⚠️ Tinned tuna | Mercury cap only | Tinned tuna does not count as oily fish for the two-portion rule. Canning depletes the long-chain omega-3s. Maximum four medium cans a week. |
| 🔴 Shark, swordfish, marlin | n/a | Never. The highest methylmercury of any fish, and mercury crosses the placenta. |
| 🔴 Cold-smoked salmon and trout, gravlax | n/a | See the traps above. |
Read the evidence: Absolutely avoid: the aisle cardFoods: the full reasoning
Practical weekly shape: one tin of sardines on toast, one frozen salmon fillet baked. Both portions done, minimal smell, minimal effort.
7. The kits: buy these as a block
Handbag
Ambient, sealed, openable one-handed.
- Mini wax-wrapped cheese portions
- Single-serve nut-butter sachets
- Small packs of plain or salted nuts
- Roasted chickpea or broad bean snack packs
- Oatcakes or rye crispbread in a sleeve
- Biltong or jerky, salty so occasional
- A 500 ml water bottle
Bedside
Everything in the handbag kit, plus:
- Single-serve long-life milk cartons: drinkable protein at 3am, no fridge
- Plain dry biscuits or oatcakes for the eat-before-you-sit-up rule
- A second water bottle
Fridge
Restocked weekly, by someone else.
- A large tub of strained Greek yoghurt and single pots
- Ready-boiled peeled eggs
- Cottage cheese
- A block of mature cheddar, pre-cut into matchbox pieces
- Cooked chicken slices
- A chilled protein pot
- Frozen shelled edamame: two minutes in the microwave, near-odourless
Practical A buying list, not a claim. What each kit is for (the bedside protocol, the never-empty-stomach rule) is in Protein pairing.
8. Online filters that actually help
- On Waitrose the useful path is Dietary & Lifestyle → Healthy Options → High Protein. On M&S it is the High Protein food category.
- Sort by protein content where you can, and use the filters to build a saved favourites list once, then reorder it weekly. The saved list is the point: decision-making capacity is the scarce resource here, not money.
- The filters do not know she is pregnant. They will happily surface cold-smoked salmon, pâté and soft cheese. Cross-check every new item against the traps above and the avoid list.
Practical Shopping mechanics rather than evidence. The list of what the filters will wrongly surface is in Absolutely avoid: the aisle card.
Product lines named in bold were confirmed as listed by the retailers at the time of research. Where a specific line could not be verified, the category is described instead. No prices are quoted anywhere, because prices move constantly and a wrong price is worse than none.