Living Foods and Pregnancy: A Lot to Be Said for Women’s Intuition
Now with every new moon
Safe inside your cocoon
A strand more of your body is spun
As does mine own grow
Ample, round, and aglow
As fruit ripening under the sun.
Tis as sweet, blessed one,
My love for you.
— Michaela Lynn, from the poem “Angel’s Secrets” written to daughter Quinn in utero
One of the first ways that babies learn about flavors is through amniotic fluid and breast milk. We’re finding that foods eaten during pregnancy and lactation can influence a baby’s willingness to accept those foods later.
— Julie Mennella, taste researcher at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadephia, Parents magazine, March 2004
As we seek to know better our bodies and to honor them with living foods, pregnancy endows us with profound opportunities. A time of new beginnings, we often have a fresh outlook on our lives and added motivation to make healthy changes to our lifestyles. When we are pregnant, our bodies tend to get our attention. Perplexing food aversions are followed by ravenous cravings, we often feel more fatigue, and our emotions sweep over us with strengthened momentum. During pregnancy, we are given a peak of opportunity to tune into our body’s needs. These include the specific needs of the fetus who now shares her mother’s body.
Research suggests that “morning sickness” for example, could very well be our bodies’ way of guiding us in the avoidance of eating various foods. In her book Protecting Your Baby-to-Be, Margie Profet presents a strong case that the symptom of nausea common in early months of pregnancy (when the risk of miscarriage is highest) serves to guard the embryo from potentially harmful levels of plant toxins. These include vegetables such as onions, garlic, broccoli, mushrooms, cabbage, and potatoes, as well as spices, and most herbs, tea, coffee, cola, and barbecued and fried foods.
This theory may offer some insight for women who experience difficulty eating their typical raw fare during pregnancy. I remember my own first trimester, walking into the Tree of Life Café, surrounded by herbaceous gourmet dishes. All of these great nutritious foods to choose from, but the only offering I could bring myself to nibble on were a few carrot and celery sticks. The peppery greens, fresh herbs and spices, and even the cold-pressed oils that I favored before pregnancy now suddenly made my stomach churn. For those first few weeks, the only food I seemed to be able to eat of any real quantity was fruit. Interestingly enough, fresh, raw fruit is the food that Profet concludes is best suited for the first three months of pregnancy.
It is after the initiation of first-trimester nausea that our desire for food generally begins to diversify. We may even find ourselves with some surprising cravings. As with morning sickness, these new food urges can also help to guide us in dietary decisions. Maybe you’ve heard Great Depression stories of pregnant women having the urge to eat dirt. This and cravings for other strange items (also referred to as “pica”) have long been associated with the lack of essential minerals. More commonly, our hunger leads us to food sources. Sometimes we reach for whole and natural foods, but what about the strong urges for the “junk” or nutrient-depleted foods? In Juicing for Life: A Guide to the Health Benefits of Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Juicing, authors Cherie Calbom and Maureen Keane offer some advice (recommendations are general, not exclusive to pregnant women): Finding the root cause of these strange food urges means “recognizing that even though you are ravenously hungry for a whole quart of pistachio ice cream or both bags of pretzels, that isn’t what your body needs biochemically. The chances are strong that it needs something very different.”
Calbom and Keane explain five common types of food cravings and the possible real nutritional need behind them: Cravings for chocolates and other sweets, for starters (a fine place to start!), often indicate deficiency in the mineral chromium found in foods such as apples, green pepper, whole wheat, carrots, spinach, and brewer’s yeast. Craving sweets may also be a sign of the need for additional protein. It makes sense that these cravings might suddenly appear (or intensify) during pregnancy—a time when our biological requirement for protein is higher. In Conscious Eating, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., says that an expectant mothers’ protein intake needs to increase by at least 30 grams, to approximately 60–75 grams per day depending on one’s constitutional type. Abundant sources of vegetable protein are: sprouted nuts and seeds, and whole grains and legumes (beans, split peas, or lentils). In the book Sunfood Success Diet, David Wolfe recommends eating date-covered almonds (remove the pits and replace with raw almonds) when chocolate bar cravings strike. These sweet protein nuggets are very satisfying. Craving chocolate may also be a craving for magnesium. For this reason, raw, peruvian olives may be helpful.
Salty food cravings on the other hand are often caused by adrenal stress, which may result from caffeine use or other factors. Calbom and Keane advise reducing table salt and increasing organic potassium, such as in parsley, garlic, spinach, and carrots. Other nutrients that support the adrenal glands are pantothenic acid (found in broccoli, cauliflower, and kale), vitamin C (kale and other leafy greens, parsley, bell pepper, and citrus), vitamin B-6 (kale, spinach, turnip greens, and sweet pepper), magnesium (beet greens, spinach, parsley, and garlic) and zinc (gingerroot, parsley, potato, garlic, and carrot). Regular table salt is easily replaced by sea salt or Celtic salt, which are more natural forms of salt. Bragg’s Liquid Amino Acids is another healthful alternative. It may be important to note that cravings for salt can also be a sign of high blood pressure, diabetes, or other serious health problems.
If you are experiencing ice cravings (also called pagophagia), it’s a good idea to have your blood tested for anemia. Anemia often results from deficiency in iron, vitamin B-12, and/or folic acid, which our bodies need more of during pregnancy. Plant foods high in iron include: pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, millet and other whole grains, parsley, almonds, leafy greens, legumes, sorghum molasses, and dried fruits. Foods that are high in vitamin C (see list above) are also key to increasing the body’s absorption of iron. In Pregnancy, Children and the Vegan Diet, Michael Klaper, M.D., tells us that, “sixty milligrams of vitamin C increases the absorption of the iron in corn by five times!… Green leafy vegetables (which contain both iron and vitamin C),” he says, “are especially valuable foods during pregnancy.” Other vitamin C-rich foods: “turnip greens, tomatoes, and cabbage,” say Klaper, “are especially good to combine with iron-rich foods.” Because the iron-absorption rate is different for each person, Klaper does not recommend uniform supplementation for every woman. “Excess iron tablets can cause stomach irritation and can actually be toxic to mother and fetus.”
When I was diagnosed with mild anemia during my own pregnancy, I was able to correct the imbalance through regular fruit and vegetable juicing (iron- and C-rich), as well as taking the liquid herbal supplement Floradex (available in health-food stores). The reduction or elimination of milk products can also be helpful, as dairy has been shown to inhibit the absorption of iron. Foods rich in folic acid include: black-eyed peas, rice, wheat germ, legumes, asparagus, walnuts, dark leafy greens, and dates. “Ample helpings of broccoli, kale, collards, or spinach, as well as one or two dried dates every few days will insure the recommended one milligram daily intake throughout pregnancy,” says Klaper. (More information on vitamin B-12 is given in Part I.)
Peanut butter cravings may mean that your body hungers for foods rich in copper. This includes peanuts, but because they are roasted before being ground into butter, the chances of rancid oils are high. This is why eating peanut butter can result in indigestion. Peanuts are also often avoided because they commonly contain of aflatoxins (a carcinogenic mold). If you’re craving peanut butter by the spoonful right out of the jar, here are some ways to diversify: brazil nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, split peas, buckwheat, gingerroot, coconut, apple, carrot, and garlic are all foods high in copper. Peanut butter cravings could also mean that your body is simply asking for healthy fats (for more info on these fats see the “Toddler Foods” section). A high-salt diet can also bring on cravings for fatty foods. Also try raw, salted, pumpkinseed butter (available through Nature’s First Law; see the “References, Further Reading, and Resources” section). It tastes very similar to natural peanut butter.
Last on the Calbom/Keane common-craving list is the urge for something sour. “Your body may need acetic acid to help detoxify a chemical produced from decaying proteins,” says the author-team. This chemical builds up in the body due to putrefying foods in the intestinal tract. Calbom and Keane advise clearing up any issues of constipation or if that’s not the problem, drinking one teaspoon of fresh lemon juice in water (to provide the acetic acid). They also recommend chlorophyll-rich green juices as well as foods high in riboflavin (vitamin B-2). B-2 rich foods, such as almonds, mushrooms, wheat germ, wild rice, millet, wheat bran, and brewer’s yeast, aid the metabolism of acetic acid.
In addition to hinting at our nutritional needs, food cravings can have other implications as well. Many people with food allergies, for example, report that the foods to which they are sensitive are also the foods that they crave the most. Desire for specific foods is also often linked to our emotional needs, force of habit, or even bodily detoxification. How then can we begin to decipher one food desire from the next?
Authors Susie Miller and Karen Knowler address this question in the book Feel-Good Food: A Guide to Intuitive Eating. They suggest that by giving our bodies a living food experience, we help to clear the often-confused pathways to our innate (or intuitive) knowledge of what it is we need. “As you return to the diet your body was designed for,” write Miller and Knowler, “the signals start to become incredibly clear, and consequently it isn’t long before you can begin to trust your instincts again.” In addition to a living diet Miller and Knowler point to a path of “inner awareness,” which includes looking at cultural influences and emotional needs (such as self-esteem) as well as practicing non-judgment and uninterrupted self-observation. Many people also find it helpful to receive feedback from health professionals using methods such as kinesiology or electro-dermal screening to help determine any specific food sensitivities or deficiencies.
In addition to the above-mentioned nutrient sources, other prenatal nutritional concerns for many women include getting enough calcium, zinc, and vitamin D. Calcium-rich foods include: leafy greens, legumes, tahini (sesame butter), sunflower seeds, and nuts. High amounts of zinc are found in whole grains, leafy greens, mushrooms, nuts, seeds (especially tahini), legumes, tofu, miso, wheat germ, and nutritional yeast. Vitamin D, which is better described as a hormone than a vitamin, is created by our own bodies as a result of sunlight shining onto our skin. This activates a fatty substance called ergosterol that becomes active “vitamin D” in our bloodstream and enables the absorption of calcium. “Sunlight is so effective in creating vitamin D,” says Klaper, “that 15 minutes of sunlight exposure on the face and arms is all that is required to meet our daily needs.” This can even be met through an open window. Vitamin D is also stored in the liver to provide us a continued supply during seasonal changes. (For pregnant women who are not able to receive adequate sunlight, however, vitamin D supplementation is advisable.)
REMEDIES FOR NAUSEAMorning sickness has also been connected to low blood sugar. In her book Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year, Susan Weed recommends eating small, frequent meals throughout the day as well as eating a protein-rich snack before going to sleep. Weed writes that morning sickness may also be attributed to the chemical by-products of pregnancy that can build-up in the body (she says, “Walk a mile a day to prevent this”) or to the deficiency of iron or of vitamin B-6.
Other Wise Woman recommendations include plenty of fresh air, visualization (to get to the root of emotional aspects of the issue), and the following tea tonics sipped first thing in the morning:
1. A cup of anise or fennel-seed tea;
2. One teaspoon of apple-cider vinegar in 8 ounces of warm water;
3. A cup or two of raspberry leaf tea or an infusion each day; sucking on ice-cubes made from the infusion increases the strength of this remedy;
4. A peppermint or spearmint infusion;
5. Tablespoon doses of gingerroot tea (anytime nausea occurs, not necessarily in the morning);
6. Dehydration can also be a factor; drink plenty of water.
KNOW YOUR FOODA word of warning: Pregnancy is the time of all times to be informed about which raw foods are edible. During my first trimester of pregnancy a well-meaning friend once served me raw elderberries in a salad. Thankfully, my body took immediate action, and I was purging miserably for an hour and a half. Every conceivable trace of the berry was ejected, and thereafter the mere thought of elderberries provoked intense nausea. It wasn’t until months later that I came across a list of toxic plants that included the elderberry. Even some edible and medicinal herbs can put the unborn at risk. Check labels, ask a trusted herbalist, and if in doubt, do without!
PRE-NATAL JUICE BOOSTSI can’t say enough about juicing fresh fruits and vegetables throughout pregnancy. It’s such a great way to bolster nutrition for you and baby, especially for those times when you don’t feel like eating for two.
This combination befriended me on a day when I felt a need for additional iron. It was a day that the thought of green juice with carrot just wasn’t appealing. I happened to look over at the leftover water from some raisins I’d soaked and a new recipe was born. It’s light and sweet with a squeeze of vitamin C. “Did I really just drink all of those beet greens?” I thought.
2 small red beets, beet greens included
Small handful parsley
1 lemon, wedged and peeled
1 cup raisin-soak water (may need to be diluted to cut sweetness depending on how many raisins were used)
Chop the red beets and juice alternately with the greens and lemon to help to push them through the hopper (if not using a “green juicer”). In a large glass of ice, combine with the raisin-soak water and stir.
For more mild fruit and veggie juice ideas, see the “Kiddie Cocktails” in the “Recipes for Children” section.