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Dr. Ann shows expecting mothers what NOT to do while pregnant, how to keep their child(ren) safe and healthy while still in the womb

Transcript

There is perhaps no other time in a life span of human where healthy eating is more important than during pregnancy and prior to pregnancy. Indeed, we now know that the nutritional choices a woman makes during her pregnancy and again even prior to not only affect her health but can affect the health of her yet unborn child over their entire life. And this is something that people don’t realize meaning we now know the food choices you make during pregnancy can impact whether or not your child will go on to develop obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes even some cancers. So the bottom line here is mama you’ve got the power. So I want to give you some guidance and pregnancy don’ts and when it comes to food. So these are foods or categories of foods that you need to restrict or avoid if you want to increase the chances that you were going to produce the ultimate and a healthy child. The first category of food you want to restrict or minimize are what I call the great white hazards, white flour products, white rice, white potatoes and sugar and sweets. The reason is first of all these would have little nutrients at least compared to their more wholesome, wholegrain and real food counterparts. We know that those foods tend to trigger appetite, promote a sweet tooth. They have adverse effects on your metabolism and they have adverse effects on the cells that are in your arteries. So try to keep them to a minimum. Number two, you want to restrict saturated fats. You’ll say, what are saturated fats, how I’m going to learn that? Its’ really easy you think four legged fats so fats and four legged animals. So the food translation of that would be fatty cuts of red meat, whole dairy products and butter. And at this point, we don’t know of any benefit for our health for saturated fat. And we definitely know that they have adverse effects primarily what they do for your metabolism and what they can do to blood flow. The third category of foods that you want to avoid are foods that contain trans fat. Trans fats are naturally toxic molecules, right? No, I can’t imagine that any women during pregnancy would willfully take in a substance that was truly toxic. And that is what we now know about trans fats. Science knows no safe limits for any amount of trans fat, where do you find it? This is manmade fat. You’re only going to find it in factory, manmade factory made foods. So you want to strictly avoid stick margarine, shortening and processed foods that list trans fats on the nutrition facts level. That’s how you get trans fats out is very simple. The fourth thing is you want to restrict sugar sweetened beverages. And I’m talking soda, fruit drinks and sports drinks unless you’re really, really sweating a long time like more than an hour which you probably shouldn’t be doing that at your pregnant anyway. Why you want to avoid this sugar sweetened beverages because they have zero nutritional value and they are definitely been shown to make it easier to gain unhealthy fat, right? These are what we call obesogenic beverages and they don’t have anything in them that is good for you. The fifth category foods I want you to be careful about are ready to eat—ready to eat like already package, refrigerated, deli style luncheon meats, hotdogs, smoked seafood unless you have reheated those things until they’re steaming hot. And the reason is because those category of foods can at times harbor unhealthy bacteria that if you as a pregnant woman developed an infection with those kind of bacteria it could actually lead to a miscarriage. You could kill your child or your fetus. The next category of food that you want to be careful of and actually strictly avoid is unpasteurized dairy products. And this would typically be things like soft cheeses like brie, blue cheese. And what you want to do here is to simply look at the labels and if you’re getting any kind of dairy products be sure it says pasteurized. Again, why unpasteurized dairy products may indeed harbor these harmful bacteria that we don’t want you to run the risk of being infected with. Again, it can actually kill your baby. Pregnant women need to avoid fish high in toxins and that would be what we know as the carnivorous longer lived fish, shark, marlin, toadfish, king mackerel, sword fish, fresh tuna, canned Albacore tuna and local fresh water fish. Completely avoid them during pregnancy. Those are the fish that are notoriously high endangered toxins since like PCBs toxins, methylmercury. Again, these are substances that your fetus and your yet unborn child can be exquisitely sensitive to and they can damage them permanently. Number eight, you want to avoid raw sprouts, raw or undercook fish, meat, poultry or eggs. The reason is same kind of thing we’ve talked about. If foods of these categories may indeed contain harmful bacteria we don’t want you to get those kinds of infections. Then next is I would stay away from liver. Who likes liver any way, it’s so yuck. Why—well in any animal, the liver is the organ of detoxification, right? You better believe that if you eat liver the chances are you’re going to be taking in some toxins. The other thing about liver that would concern about is it may if you eat it a lot during pregnancy you may build up too much vitamin A in your system. And that can actually also be harmful to developing fetus. Next, alcohol. Please no. Alcohol should be 100% strictly avoided throughout pregnancy because we now know even small amounts may indeed increase the chances of fetal malformation and negatively impact the developing brain and nervous system of a fetus Lastly, caffeine, coffee, tea, diet and regular soda that may contain caffeine, the studies are pretty consistent here. We tend to see a very regular consistent association between caffeine intake in pregnancy and a high rate of miscarriage. And again, what is more precious than our children and I don’t believe in taking any chances. So, my advice for any pregnant women is just play it completely safe, be as perfect as you can and try to avoid all sources of caffeine. So remember, mama you’ve got the power. You hold so much power and what you do during pregnancy is your diet and lifestyle can have a lasting and permanent impact on the health of your child throughout their entire life span. That’s amazing to think about. So make the right choices and due make a consorted effort to avoid the things or restricted things that we just went over. For ICYou, this Dr. Anne.