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?

Why you can’t get vitamin A from eating vegetables

There’s a common misconception that beta-carotene found in fruits and vegetables is the same thing as vitamin A. It’s not.

Beta-carotene is the precursor (inactive form) of retinol, the active form of vitamin A. While beta-carotene is converted into vitamin A in humans, only 3% gets converted in a healthy adult. And that’s assuming you’re not one of the 45% of adults that don’t convert any beta-carotene into vitamin A at all.

This means that – contrary to popular wisdom – vegetables like carrots and red peppers are not adequate food sources of vitamin A.

Vitamin A is found in significant amounts only in animal products like liver and grass-fed dairy. You’d have to eat a huge amount of beta-carotene from plants to meet vitamin A requirements during pregnancy. For example, 3 ounces of beef liver contains 27,000 IU of vitamin A. As the chart below illustrates, to get the same amount of vitamin A from plants (assuming a 3% conversion of beta-carotene to vitamin A), you’d have to eat 4.4 pounds of cooked carrots, 40 pounds of raw carrots, and 50 cups of cooked kale!

Why eating only lean protein is a bad idea

Remember back in the early 90s when lean proteins like boneless, skinless chicken breast, nonfat milk and whey protein powder became all the rage?

This was based on the idea that fat is bad for us (which we now know is wrong) and we should avoid it as much as possible.

But it turns out that not only is eating lean protein unnecessary, it’s potentially harmful.

What most people don’t know is that we need fat soluble vitamins (especially vitamin A) to absorb the protein we eat. And guess what? Fat-soluble vitamins are found almost exclusively in animal fats. Lean protein has very little fat, and thus, no fat soluble vitamins.

So what happens when you eat exclusively lean protein? Your body will “withdraw” fat soluble vitamins stored in your liver in order to absorb the proteins. Over time, this will lead to a deficiency of fat-soluble vitamins, and all of the significant health problems that go along with such a deficiency.

It’s analogous to charging up a huge credit card bill when you don’t have a job. Eventually the creditors come calling and you go bankrupt.

Babies should be breastfed exclusively for 6 months

Breast milk is nature’s perfect food for babies.

Think about it: mother nature has had more than 2.5 million years to figure this one out.  Breast milk contains the perfect mix of fat, protein and carbohydrate for the babies developing physiology.  It contains protective substances that give her immunity to diseases.

In the early stages of a baby’s life, breast milk meets all of her nutrient needs.  No other foods or fluids – including water – are necessary.  (Breast milk itself is 88% water, which more than satisfies an infant’s thirst).

A report called Infant and Young Child Feeding issues by the World Health Organization summarized research indicating that infants should be breasted exclusively for the first 6 months of their lives.  Babies exclusively breastfed for 6 months have 8.6 times lower risk of diarrheal illness.  A study from India found that deaths from diarrhea and pneumonia could be decreased by one-third if infants were exclusively (rather than partially) breastfed for the first 4 months.  Sadly, only 35% of infants are exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of life.

Cod liver oil: nature’s most potent superfood?

In general I think we should try to meet most of our nutrient needs by eating fresh foods.

After all, that’s the the way humans are adapted to absorbing nutrients.  Isolated, synthetic nutrients don’t have the same effect on our bodies, because most nutrients require co-factors and enzymes to be properly absorbed and activated.  These are not often present in supplements.

Cod liver oil is a notable exception.  In fact, even though most people think of it as a supplement, it’s more accurate to refer to it as a food – or perhaps “superfood”.

In particular, I recommend that all men and women trying to get pregnant, and all women that are pregnant and breastfeeding, take fermented cod liver oil (sold by Green Pastures – I have no affiliation with them).

Why cod liver oil?

Why low-salt diets are dangerous during pregnancy

Salt is absolutely essential to health. It is one of the five basic tastes we have receptors for in our mouth (along with sweetness, bitterness, sourness and umami), and it is an important element in the body’s “interior ocean”.

The human body tightly regulates salt concentration because it is crucial to chemical reactions that support enzyme function, energy and hormone production, protein transport and several other biological processes.

In the context of pregnancy, salt is critical for the development of the glial (immune) cells in the brain. It also plays an important role in ensuring adequate birth weight, metabolic function and development of the nervous, respiratory and cardiovascular system.