Some women who plan to conceive as well as some pregnant women might get confused over the contradictory advice they receive about nutrition and diet for this special period in their life.
The only common things they often hear are no caffeine, no alcohol and no smoking. But what they should do beyond these common sense advice?
New studies come to answer this important questions. Tania Lombrozo, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has explored a vegan diet for pregnant women. The findings are that a vegan pregnancy is just fine. She explained on NPR that having a nutritious diet may come in many forms. Her research report was released earlier this year in BJOG, An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The professor analyzed 262 studies available on the topic of vegan-vegetarian diets in pregnancy in order to come to her conclusions in her study.
Professor Lombrozo's research found no increase of severe problems in pregnant women pursuing a vegan diet. However, beyond this, evidence was inconclusive. Some data show lower birthweight babies for vegan mothers while others reporting higher birthweight babies. Also, the length of pregnancy did not vary between omnivores and vegan-vegetarians. The review found little evidence that a vegetarian or vegan diet can either reduce or increase the risk of adverse pregnancy-related events such as major birth defects or eclampsia.
Another study on the best nutrition rules before and during pregnancy has shown that women who eat healthily may cut the risk of their baby developing a heart problem. Researchers found this link by studying 19,000 U.S. women's diet in the year leading up to pregnancy. According to scientists experts in nutrition, a healthy diet should include plenty of nuts and vegetables, fruit, and fresh fish.
Women trying to conceive and pregnant women are already advised by their doctors to take certain supplements such as vitamin D for healthy teeth and bones and folic acid to reduce the risk of birth defects such as spina bifida. In England for example, the government's Healthy Start scheme provides vouchers that can be used to buy vegetables and milk by pregnant women.
In the new study published in Archives of Diseases in Childhood Fetal & Neonatal Edition, half of the participant women had babies with heart problems while the other half did not. By comparing the diets of these two groups, the researchers found that a healthier maternal diet was associated with a lower chance of babies developing congenital heart defects.
According to Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the BHF, this study "highlights the importance of diet right from the start of life". Taylor added that by following a healthy diet before, during and after pregnancy women ensure benefits for both mother and child nutrients.
A third study has shown that a mother's diet around the time of conception can influence permanently her baby's DNA. Researchers have also found that diet in pregnancy can switch genes on or off.
According to Dr. Robert Waterland from Baylor College of Medicine in England, the study comes with the first evidence on human subjects that diet before and during the pregnancy has an influence on the genome of all the cells of the body. The research paper was published in the journal Nature Communications.
