Eating for Two: Part 1

When you're pregnant, everything your baby needs to grow, from that very first cell onward, comes directly from you. Their brain, heart, and muscles are all built using the nutrients you consume. Your baby is, quite literally, made from your own flesh and blood. The food you eat during pregnancy, or even before, is the sole source of fuel and building materials for your baby's development. There's simply nothing else.

This is a unique time. Together, you and your baby have different nutritional needs than either of you would have on your own. Since you're the one doing the eating, we'll focus on how your diet needs to adapt.

Unfortunately, nutrition hasn't always been a top priority in mainstream medicine. While we've made significant strides in understanding nutrition recently, much of this knowledge hasn't made its way into medical textbooks, let alone popular parenting guides. The information in this series is current as of the latest Dietary Reference Intakes for each nutrient at the time of publication.

Prenatal vitamins are formulated with these recommendations in mind. However, it's important to remember that the few vitamins and minerals in those pills are just the "stars" of the nutritional show. Every whole food you eat contains thousands of micronutrients that we're only just beginning to understand. Some of these crucial "extras" don't even have names yet. A diet rich in a variety of organic foods, where these "leading actor" nutrients naturally occur, is likely the best approach for pregnancy.

Prenatal vitamins serve as a fantastic safety net. While getting more of these nutrients from food is generally excellent, taking excessive amounts as supplements is both unnecessary and not advisable.