New Study: Pre-pregnancy Nutrition May Effect Baby’s Health
A new study in Nature Communications has found that a women’s diet before and during conception is important to a baby’s development. Encouraging women who are of child-bearing age to partake in a healthy diet even before they are pregnant.
According to the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), diet considerations for women of child bearing age include:
- Eat foods rich in vitamin B and Folic Acid. Folic Acid helps to prevent neural tube defects during pregnancy. Pasta, breads, and leafy green vegetables like spinach are all rich in Folic Acid. View our Folic Acid filled Linguine Spinach Pesto recipe here.
- Get atleast 27 milligrams of iron a day. Foods like spinach, kale, leafy greens, beans, fortified cereals, red meat, chicken and fish are all high in iron and can help to meet this suggestion.
- To help the development of the baby’s teeth bones, heart, nerves, and other muscles ensure that you get enough calcium. AND suggests at least three servings a day of foods high in calcium like milf, yogurt, and cheese.
Looking for recipes that fit into these recommendations, view our full recipe list here. For more information on the new study watch this video from 9 News:
For reference: Nature Communications is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences and has an Impact Factor of 10.015 according to the 2012 Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2013). Papers published by the journal represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field.