Safe Food: What to eat and drink in pregnancy
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Next time you pick up an item of packaged food – a loaf of bread or a tin of baked beans, maybe – take a look at the panel of ‘Nutritional Information’ on the label. This information can be very useful when planning a balanced diet – especially when deciding whether or not to include a new food.
In Chapter 1 we used ‘servings’ to describe how much of each food group we need. We did not include weights because we feel that most women prefer not to spend their time weighing food and calculating the nutritional content of each item. Sometimes, however, it is useful to know just what a new food would contribute to your diet.
Imagine, for example, that you are trying to choose between two brands of breakfast cereal. The short list below suggests how much of each food group we need, in grams (usually written simply as ‘g’). With these figures in mind, you can look at the amounts written on the Nutritional Information of the two cereals and see what proportion of that need would be met by an average portion of each one.
Each day during pregnancy the average woman needs:
But things are not always as they appear! Sometimes interpreting food labels needs a bit of detective work.
Key points
3 Safety first
Pregnancy is a time to enjoy a rich variety of foods. It is also a time to take care of yourself and your growing baby by keeping in mind a few basic guidelines on food choice and preparation.
In this chapter we talk about the foods that may cause problems for you and your baby during pregnancy, and suggest ways in which you can avoid these problems.
‘Why do I have to be so careful?’
‘It’s all so confusing. There seems to be endless lists of things I can’t eat. When I was pregnant last time, I went to a family party. I put some home-made mayonnaise on my salad without thinking and spent the next six months worrying.’
‘I feel like a child again with people saying “don’t eat this, don’t eat that”. It’s all rather patronising.’
Throughout pregnancy your baby is protected, floating in warm fluid contained within a bag of strong membranes, safe inside your uterus (womb). Her gateway to the world – to your body – is the placenta (afterbirth). Within the placenta, oxygen and nutrients pass from your blood to your baby’s circulation, and carbon dioxide and other waste products are washed away.
The placenta is also a protective barrier. It filters out most bacteria, some drugs and other harmful substances. However, viruses (germs which are smaller than bacteria) and some bacteria can pass through.
Most of the germs with which we come into contact are harmless. There are, however, a few germs that may cause severe illness in babies. Examples include the virus that causes rubella (German measles), the listeria bacteria and the toxoplasmosis parasite.
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