Pregnancy can feel like a time when you CAN’T do things. The food, the drinks, exercise, sleeping positions, long haul flights…. this being my third pregnancy I wanted to focus on what you CAN do.
Pregnancy is an important time to focus on yourself and also on the new baby. The affects of eating well in pregnancy are not shortlived. Research suggests that how you eat can affect your child’s long term health including mental health, risk of type 2 diabetes, cancers, obesity and cardiovascular disease. This is known as the fetal origins of adult disease. A cohort of mums form the Dutch Hunger Famine of 1944-5 have been followed and the research has shown how their diet had affects on the children. Changes in nutrition at different stages of pregnancy can have long term affects on health.
Metabolic programming is the term used for this concept that nutrition and lifestyle choices early on in life can impact on later health. For example it has been shown that obese mums and mums that gain more weight in pregnancy are more likely to have obese children. The EarlyNutrition Project is a large scale research project looking into this further.
The short version is, that what you eat in pregnancy can have long lasting effects.
So I have put together a short video clip of what you CAN eat in pregnancy, the good parts to focus on.
Look out for more posts on healthy snacks for pregnancy and see my post on healthy eating in pregnancy.