5 Myths About Pregnancy Nutrition – #2: All Women Should Take Iron During Pregnancy

Iron is a mineral that has long been known to be important during pregnancy.  It’s essential to making hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen to the cells and tissues of the body.  During pregnancy, blood volume increases by 30%, which means women need more iron to make more hemoglobin.  This is especially true during the 2nd and 3rd trimester.

If a woman enters pregnancy without sufficient iron stores, she will become anemic during the later stages of pregnancy.  This is why the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for iron goes from 18 mg/d in non-pregnant women to 27 mg/d in pregnant women.

On this basis alone, we might suspect it’s essential for all women to supplement with iron during pregnancy.  And that’s exactly what the mainstream health authorities recommend.

5 Myths About Pregnancy Nutrition – #1: A Low-Fat Diet is the Best Choice

The so-called health authorities have been promoting a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet for decades now.  Yet infertility rates are higher than they’ve ever been before – and still rising.  1 in 7 women already have trouble conceiving, and a recent study in the UK predicted that number could rise to 1 in 3 by the year 2020.

The following three arguments suggest that a high-fat – not a low-fat – diet is optimal for fertility and pregnancy.

Breast milk is the perfect food for infants

Human breast milk is undoubtedly the perfect food for human infants.  The nutritional composition of human breast milk has evolved over 2.5 million years to supply the exact ratio of nutrients necessary for proper growth and development.

Recipe: Heavenly Sourdough Buckwheat Pancakes

A while back, a colleague of mine turned me on to the idea of sourdough buckwheat crepes. Since I’m always looking for new things to put butter and cream on, I thought I’d give it a try. The results were adequate, but I had a couple of issues:

No matter how much fat I put in the pan, I couldn’t keep the crepes from sticking

They were a bit too dense and bland for my taste

My wife Elanne and I (foodies that we are) have been experimenting with ways to improve the basic recipe. And after several weeks of trial and error, I think we’ve achieved sourdough buckwheat pancake nirvana!

Why sourdough buckwheat?