Mamma Mia!
By Juliet Gellatley, Founder & Director, Viva!
Having a baby is truly momentous – you want to do everything you can to give your little one the best start in life. So, suddenly your vegan diet is open to scrutiny in a way it never has been before, including by yourself, as the enormity of being responsible not just for yourself, but for this whole new person growing inside of you, hits. Some health professionals are well informed and others simply are not – they may even try to persuade you to give up on being vegan… Don’t listen! When pregnant, I was told I was the only mother of twins they had known not to be anaemic, I proudly responded: “It is because I have a healthy vegan diet, packed with foods brimming in iron.” They looked surprised but couldn’t argue. By allowing health professionals to praise your health status and afterwards telling them you are vegan, throws them in a very satisfying (and hopefully educational) way.
The truth is, a balanced vegan diet is packed with disease-busting, body-and brainnurturing nutrients and is ideal for a healthy pregnancy. Just as importantly, a vegan diet often eliminates many of the ‘nasties’ you need to avoid, including saturated fats, cholesterol-raising foods, concentrated pesticides, cancer promoters, dioxins and mercury. The latter two are in practically all fish.
A healthy pregnancy should just be an extension of your normal healthy diet. If you eat well anyway, then eating right for your unborn child won’t be such a radical change. If, however, your diet has always been based around junk food, meat and dairy produce, then it’s time it wasn’t, for the sake of you, your baby and the animals. The secret of healthy eating before and during pregnancy is variety, but focusing on a mixture of wholegrains (three servings daily), pulses (peas, beans and lentils of all types), unsalted mixed nuts* and seeds (two to three portions daily), and fresh fruit and vegetables (seventen servings daily), as well as some healthy essential fats and vitamin B12-fortified foods.
A WEIGHTY ISSUE
Being underweight or overweight affects your baby more than you might think. Many studies show that mums who under-eat increase their child’s risk of developing obesity and related diseases (e.g. heart disease, diabetes or cancer). It is believed that the foetus makes physiological adaptations to the ‘famine’ to prepare for life after birth. Far from being protective, these changes make the child more vulnerable to obesity and disease.
Recent research has also shown that when mums eat a high-fat and/or high-sugar diet during pregnancy it can result in their baby being predisposed to obesity, and possibly having metabolic syndrome (the precursor to type 2 diabetes). To state the obvious, it’s just as important to not under or overeat during pregnancy, as it is to eat the ‘right’ types of food.
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October 2018
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