Pregnancy Nutrition

Making sure you eat enough food to provide your body with the vitamins and minerals it needs to provide you with good health and energy is important throughout life, but especially when you’re pregnant. Your body has to deal with a lot of changes that are taking place and must provide a healthy diet to help your baby’s growth and development.

It is therefore, very important that when you are pregnant, you try to eat a good variety of foods. Five portions of fruit and vegetables, whether they are fresh, tinned, or frozen, should form part of your pregnancy nutrition, and they could also be dried or in a glass of juice.

Cutting down on cakes and biscuits is a good idea because they have a lot of sugar and fat in them and sometimes bicarbonate of soda. However, you do need some starchy foods and malt loaf, currant buns, bread, brown rice, pasta and potatoes are good for you. Having wholemeal products will provide you with enough fiber along with your fruit and vegetables.

Dairy foods, such as milk, yogurt and cheese will provide your body with calcium but some cheeses should not be included in your pregnancy nutrition plan. These are Brie, Camembert and Stilton, or blue cheeses. These can contain listeria, which is a harmful bacteria to your baby.

Cereals, which contain folic acid, are essential for you and your baby’s development especially in the early months, or you could take folic acid supplements. Other foods that contain the natural form of folic acid, which is known as folate, include green vegetables, brown rice, and fortified bread, in case you don’t like breakfast cereal.

If you take folic acid supplements, make sure they do not contain Vitamin A. Vitamins are also an important part of pregnancy nutrition, but Vitamin A can build up to high levels in your body and such levels are not good for your baby. 400 mcg of folic acid and 10 mcg of Vitamin D are the recommended doses per day to keep you healthy.