When you’re pregnant, eating becomes complicated. And I’m not even talking about the whole weight gain thing, which is its own boondoggle – apparently, you’re not “eating for two” so much as you’re just having an extra snack a day (about 300 calories). Sigh.
At any rate, there are so many recommendations and rules – enough iron and vitamin A but not too much, some fish are good and some are bad, lunch meat is suddenly dangerous – that it can be hard to keep up. Especially when you’re having a week where all you really want to do is eat jalapenos and cinnamon rolls.
Using the recommendations from the Mayo Clinic, American Academy of Pediatrics, National Institutes of Health and my own instincts, I devised a cheat sheet for food rules while pregnant. I try to stick to them to make sure I’m keeping both of us well fed during the coming months.
No tuna, or any other really big fish
Tuna and other large fish such as swordfish are known to have high mercury content, which the FDA warns could be harmful for a developing brain.
No raw anything
In some cases if it’s been frozen first it’s OK but the rules are confusing and besides, previously frozen sashimi just seems like a “why bother?”
Minimal deli meats
This includes smoked salmon. A bacteria called listeria can be found on various uncooked and unpasteurized foods, and some deli meats. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) found pregnant women to be at highest risk of contracting listeriosis (the illness resulting from listeria exposure) and advises them to avoid certain processed meats. Listeriosis starts out feeling like the flu, but can lead to health complications, including premature delivery or miscarriage.
No funky cheese
The rules on cheese change every five minutes – and tend to differ depending on where in the world you are – but the general rule is to avoid raw cheeses and soft cheeses, like Brie, feta, and blue cheese, which carry concerns of listeria exposure because they are unpasteurized.
Steer clear of liver
Most people think of carrots when they think of vitamin A, but it’s also found in high quantities in many animal products, especially liver and fish oils. The vitamin A found in these foods is called preformed vitamin A, also known as retinol, while the forms found in fruits and vegetables are carotenoids. It’s the preformed vitamin A you need to keep an eye on during pregnancy – good in small doses to help with vision and reproduction, too much preformed vitamin A can lead to liver toxicity or even birth defects. While keeping liver off your plate might be easy enough, keep in mind that various other animal products, including eggs, fish, meat, and poultry, as well as fortified cereals, also contain preformed vitamin A, as do some prenatal vitamins. According to US dietary guidelines, pregnant women should not exceed 3,000 mcg RAE (10,000 IU) of preformed vitamin A daily, but the sky’s the limit with carotenoids, so feel free to double-down on carrots and leafy greens.
Food-based prenatal vitamins
The food-based vitamins digest more completely, and they’re good for nutrition and heartburn so try to take them daily.
Have lots of these
Spinach and beans are great sources of lean protein, naturally occurring folate (a B vitamin that helps prevent neural tube defects, brain and spinal cord abnormalities), and iron. Nuts and citrus also deliver folate, as well as calcium, protein and, in the case of citrus, vitamin C. Cheese, milk, kale and broccoli are good sources of bone-building calcium. And salmon (the non-smoked kind) is a good source of vitamin D, which helps to strengthen teeth and bones, and protein, which is crucial for baby’s growth, especially during the second and third trimesters. Non-animal sources of protein recommended for pregnant women include nuts, peanut butter, and lentils.
And, because I’m an environmental health reporter, I’ve got the following bonus rules:
No plastic-wrapped food
Phthalates in plastic leech into food and are increasingly being connected to all sorts of developmental issues.
Go organic on fruit and veg
Cost permitting, plump for organic apples, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, kale, potatoes, celery, grapes, spinach, cucumbers, peas and peppers. These are crops that not only tend to be treated with the largest volumes of pesticides, but also that deliver the highest doses of chemical residues to eaters. In utero pesticide exposure has been linked to lower IQs in infants.
But perhaps most importantly, I finally hit on an approach that helped me feel like I not only had a good handle on the whole nutrition thing, but also was giving my kid as good a start nutritionally as I could.
When I’m making a food decision, I run it through the ‘Would I feed this to a three-year-old?’ test. Envisioning that alien in my belly as a little human just makes it easier for me to make good choices, and to say no to jalapeno poppers (OK, admittedly not every time).
Now that I’m both pregnant and actually feeding a three-year-old on a daily basis, I can attest to the fact that this little filter was also good prep for preparing toddler meals, because I’d already spent at least a little bit of time thinking about what would and wouldn’t be an appropriately healthy meal for a growing child.
Sounds simple, I know, but it helped me and maybe it can do the same for you. Let us know in the comments below what your food tips are for eating while pregnant.
