During pregnancy, the fetus’ cells and physiological capacities are developing. Therefore, women need to eat a well balance diet that has sufficient calories and represents a variety of food groups. They need to be encouraged to maintain a healthy diet and sufficient exercise throughout pregnancy.
A pregnant woman directly influences the nutritional status of her baby, and she must be sure her diet contains adequate nutrients for herself and for her baby.
Some women experience pica (persistent eating of foods that have not nutrient value). Pica behavior may lessen the nutritional level of the mother and her fetus since the mother may not eat nutritious foods in sufficient quantity, which can lead to poor weight gain, low birth weight and intrauterine growth retardation.
Also, the substance that the woman is eating may have harmful effects to the maternal fetal unit.
Pregnant women should increase their intake of essential nutrients and calories. For example to satisfy the protein demand of pregnancy, WHO recommends a total diet daily intake of .52-.57 g/kg.
Fat is more energy dense than carbohydrate or protein. Recent evident suggest that omega-3 fatty acids consumed during pregnancy are beneficial to cognitive development in infancy and childhood.
Pregnant women should consume 25-30% of their daily energy as fatty acids and they requiring 2500 kcal/day would need to consume 69-83 total grams fats daily.
They will need extra iron and may require additional vitamin and mineral supplementation. A pregnant woman needs iron to satisfy the demand created by the growth of fetus, placenta and red cell mass during pregnancy and also the blood loss expected at the time of parturition.
Balance diet during pregnancy
