Well, first we of course have to acknowledge that “healthy” looks different for everyone.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
But speaking from a purely nutritional standpoint, research suggests that a whole lot of women aren’t meeting the recommended amounts of certain nutrients.
This might be hard to hear, because I bet you are doing everything you can to grow a healthy baby!
And the thing is that sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, so I don’t blame you if you weren’t even aware that there are pregnancy specific nutrient requirements.
However, if you aren’t meeting certain targets, you and your baby may be more vulnerable to adverse outcomes, or may miss out on benefits associated with specific micronutrients.
As always though, the good news is that you can definitely make simple changes to boost your intake.
Before going into that, let’s look a bit further into what we know.
The evidence
I want to highlight one particular study that stands out to me, because they had some pretty jaw-on-the-floor findings.
Slater et al. (2020) surveyed over 500 women to see how their diets compared to the Australian dietary guidelines, i.e. whether people were eating the recommended serves of the five food groups (fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, dairy (and alternatives), meat (and alternatives).
They found that none of the women were meeting the recommendations for all food groups.
The food group that the most people were getting enough of was fruit.
But even then, only about 40% of women were meeting the target.
Things are grimmer for the other food groups.
Around 30% were eating enough vegetables.
Only roughly 15% getting enough dairy and meat (or plant based alternatives).
Less than 1% of women were eating enough wholegrains.
Wow.
And these findings are very consistent with evidence from previous years.
Why does it matter if you’re eating the target serves of each food group?
Because the food group system is like a proxy to make sure you are meeting your nutrient requirements.
And meeting nutrient requirements ensures that you are getting all the right ingredients to grow a healthy baby.
This study also looked at some key nutrients during pregnancy: fibre, calcium, iron, folate and zinc.
And guess what?
Only four of the 534 women were meeting the requirements of these nutrients.
Again: Jaw. On. The. Floor.
Another earlier study also found women to be falling short on folate, iron and vitamin D.
Plus, we are starting to learn the importance of other nutrients like omega 3 and choline.
While research on these so far is limited, it seems like typical intake is also inadequate.
The function of all of these nutrients is a blog post for another day, but trust me when I say that they are all absolutely critical to the development of your baby.
Another thing
A few studies have shown that a lot of women are getting way too much saturated fat and salt.
This likely suggests that more nutritious options are being displaced by more processed, nutrient-poor foods. As a very simple example of what I mean, it’s like having chips for a snack instead of something like veggie sticks and hummus.
High intakes of saturated fat and salt is linked with worse health outcomes, and can be particularly detrimental for people with conditions like gestational diabetes, e.g. worsening insulin resistance.
Why might this be happening?
Obviously pregnancy throws some curveballs when it comes to healthy eating.
You’re dealing with things like nausea, heartburn, reflux, feeling full quickly, food aversions, fatigue etc.
So it can definitely be hard to choose nutritious options all the time, I see that and appreciate that.
But in saying this, we also know that population-wide (not pregnancy specific) very very few people meet the dietary guidelines.
I’m talking, less than 5% of us eat the recommended number of vegetables.
Only 30% meet the target for fruits and wholegrains, and about 15% meet the target for meat and dairy (and plant based alternatives).
So while I would love to think that the low nutrient intakes during pregnancy are symptom-related, I feel like it’s probably more to do with all the usual barriers we face in life, like being super busy, tired, uber-eats being a click away, and not always prioritizing ourselves and our needs.
What does this mean for you?
If you have gestational diabetes, let me be crystal clear:
Do NOT make the mistake of only focusing on carbs and blood sugar.
To grow a healthy baby, you need to be thinking about your diet as a whole.
And if you don’t have gestational diabetes, the same thing applies.
You need to zoom out a bit to make sure you are ticking off all of your nutrient targets.
You can also make sure you are taking a prenatal supplement (throughout pregnancy) tailored to your needs to cover you for nutrients you don’t routinely get enough of in your diet.
Please don’t solely rely on this though – whole foods have many advantages over supplements, so do try and eat your nutrients where you can.
You don’t have to try and become a dietitian overnight though.
I really hope reading this doesn’t completely overwhelm you or freak you out.
And the last thing I would recommend is googling what to do, as the the internet is a very stressful mish-mash of new, old, true and false information.
It is hard to decipher what’s what.
My best suggestion is to load up your diet with lots of whole foods and to aim for diversity.
I often recommend you structure your plate with roughly 1/2 plate of vegetables, 1/4 plate of carbs, 1/4 plate of protein and a small serve of healthy fats.
Aiming for 3 different colours of vegetables at your main meals also helps tick off lots of micronutrients.
And going for small, frequent meals across the day e.g. 3 small meals and 3 substantial snacks gives you plenty of opportunity to fit in lots of nutrient dense foods.
This isn’t individual advice though, so you may need to do things a bit differently in your own situation- people (like me!) exist to help you with this.
If you haven’t already, I suggest downloading my free guide to the 13 mistakes to avoid with gestational diabetes.
And of course, you are always welcome to slide into my email inbox or Instagram DMs to be pointed in the right direction.
I hope this helps.
x
This was a long one, so TLDR:
pregnant women are falling very short of recommended nutrient intakes.
This has implications for the development of your baby and for your own health.
The Australian Guide to Healthy is a good place to start to compare your food intake to the targets.
If you have gestational diabetes please don’t only focus on carbs and blood sugar.
You need to look at your diet as a whole.
*Please be assured that I have not cherry-picked the evidence here – the findings in the study I have highlighted are very very consistent with all of those in the million other tabs I have open.
I’m just simplifying things for you.
Please feel more than welcome to contact me for more references if you’d like to take a look for yourself.
