A great rule of thumb to ask yourself before eating is:
“Does this food give my baby and me nutrients or just calories?”
If your answer is the latter, then eat something else!
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that pregnant women in their second and third trimesters should eat 300 extra calories a day and nursing mothers should add about 500.
It isn’t as much as you might think…
Three hundred extra calories is roughly equal to one cup of whole-milk yogurt plus an apple. Add two slices of whole-wheat bread to that and the total jumps to 500 calories.
For great information about nutrition during pregnancy, read this article published by the University of Rhode Island’s Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program.
To learn more about children’s nutritional needs, visit the Children’s Nutrition Research Center. Look under “consumer news” and nutrition on the web site. They have a great electronic newsletter that you can sign up for too.
Photo credit: James Gathany/CDC
Recent Comments