5 Foods for a Healthy Pregnancy

What every expectant mother should be eating

Introduction

As you might have heard, my wife recently became pregnant.

Naturally we are trying to have the healthiest pregnancy and baby possible.

But, as any couple who has been pregnant knows, you’ll be bombarded by a wide array of well-intentioned “advice” on how to ensure you have a “healthy” pregnancy.

‘Don’t forget to take your pre-natal vitamins’, says your mom.

‘Saturated fats are bad for pregnant women, choose the fat-free option’, warns your friend.

‘Raw dairy can be dangerous for unborn babies’, you read in the book you’ve been gifted.

And thus you feel exasperated by the infinite and often contradictory information that’s out there. Health for yourself is hard enough; now that there’s a baby involved, the stakes are even higher, and deciphering which foods you’re “allowed” to be eating is all the more difficult.

Often this “advice” comes from people who themselves have not had optimally healthy babies or pregnancies. And yet they give it anyway.

So what is a pregnant couple to do?

In this post, I am going to wade through FDA falsehoods and Big Pharma fallacies to get to the truth of what every expectant mother should be eating to ensure the optimal health of her and her child.

The Role of Nutrition in Pregnancy

When Weston Price journeyed around the world and studied the diets of indigenous tribes, he observed that in every single culture, pregnant women were fed specific, nutrient-dense diets.

For instance, the Maasai people in Africa would prohibit a woman from marrying and getting pregnant until after it had rained. This was to ensure the cows could feed on lush, green grass and produce especially nutrient-rich milk for the women to drink.

everyone knows that the happiest cows make the healthiest milk

And in the Pacific Islands, he noticed that tribal women were assigned a boy (separate from their husband) whose sole job was to scavenge and hunt for her the necessary foods of pregnancy.

So it seems that traditional cultures have always known what the medical establishment reluctantly admits - that what a woman eats while pregnant greatly influences the intelligence, appearance, and general health of the baby.

We now know that poor nutrition during pregnancy increases the risk of birth defects and degenerative diseases. Despite this, the Western world continues to leave mothers severely under-prepared to understand the vital role of nutrition during pregnancy.

The reason why will be left for another time. But as a well-intentioned parent, it’s clear that you cannot rely on the mechanized birthing industry to tell you what is optimal for your kids.

So in approximate order of importance, here are 5 foods that I believe are crucial to a healthy pregnancy.

Disclaimer: everyone is different, pregnancy is a sensitive topic, and not everything works for everyone. This is simply what we’re doing and why.

1. Meat and Organs

Pasture-raised, grass-fed meat, particularly beef, lamb, and game, is a vital component of an expectant mother's diet.

Meat is rich in protein, iron, and zinc - all necessary for building the baby’s blood, body, and brain.

Liver, too, is an excellent source of iron and zinc. And, it contains an abundance of other nutrients, including phosphorus, calcium, choline, biotin, and folate.

In fact, liver has long been revered by traditional cultures as a pregnancy superfood - and for good reason. With more vitamin C per gram than apples or carrots and over 60 times the amount of vitamin A found in meat itself, liver is the most nutrient-dense food in the human diet.

The importance of vitamin A to the development of an unborn baby cannot be understated. Vitamin A is responsible for the differentiation and patterning of the cells, tissues, and organs, as well as the communication systems between the organs and the brain. Thus, a deficiency can result in spontaneous abortion, prolonged labor, eye defects, and premature degeneration of the nervous system.

In fact, vitamin A from animal foods is the primary nutrient Weston Price deemed responsible for the full development of tribal babies, and the developmental disabilities of their “civilized” counterparts.

Vitamin A, the difference between collapsed jaws and malformed teeth and perfect dental health

Unfortunately, liver is not always the most palatable food, particularly during pregnancy.

Many women actually have a tough time eating meats in general while pregnant, which is why pre-pregnancy is the right time to consider building up the necessary nutrient stores.

So if you struggle to stomach meat or organs, try to get creative. But if nothing works, at least you have…

2. Raw Dairy

We all know that any “healthiest foods” list wouldn’t be complete without raw dairy. The list of essential foods for expectant mothers is no exception, despite what the FDA might say.

Not only does raw dairy provide peak nutrition, it also tastes amazing and is highly palatable for pregnant women who might have trouble keeping other foods down.

Milk

We’ve all heard the scare stories about how “drinking raw milk is like playing Russian roulette with your health”, especially for pregnant women. But, as citizens of Tan Land, we know better than this.

The risks of raw milk are comically exaggerated and many studies that link raw milk with illness are heavily biased.

The FDA often warns about the dangers of contracting Listeria monocytogenes from raw milk. Listeria is certainly a concern in pregnancy, because it is able to enter the uterus and mess with the baby. While this is a serious infection that can have severe implications for pregnant women, in reality, the culprit is very rarely raw milk.

According to The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care, listeria is far more common in pasteurized milk and deli meats than raw milk. And further, raw milk kills pathogens in its own right.

In fact, raw milk from pasture-raised cows is not only vastly superior to pasteurized milk in terms of its nutritional profile, it also has proven benefits for unborn babies. Amongst other things, drinking raw milk throughout pregnancy has been linked to babies born with stronger bones and teeth, better immunity, and a decreased risk of developing asthma and allergies.

Remember the Masaai from before? It was raw milk that the women had to eat for months before they were allowed to get pregnant.

Hard Cheeses

But, if you find raw milk difficult to obtain or digest, aged raw cheese can serve a similar purpose.

I want to emphasize aged here, because soft, unaged cheese - whether it’s raw or pasteurized - unfortunately can pose a listeria risk for pregnant women. There have been numerous reports of miscarriages, illness, and even fatalities from soft cheeses, so it would be best to err on the side of caution with this one.

Basically, if you’re pregnant, you should probably avoid soft, unaged cheeses of all varieties, but hard, aged raw cheese is definitely fair game.

Butter

Predictably, just like raw milk and aged raw cheese, raw butter from pasture-raised, grass-fed cows is far more nutritionally dense than its pasteurized counterpart.

Rich in vitamins A and D, as well as selenium, copper, zinc, and chromium, raw butter is packed full of nutrients essential for a healthy pregnancy. It also contains ample amounts of vitamin E.

Vitamin E was initially dubbed ‘Fertility Factor X’ in 1992 because it appeared that rats couldn’t reproduce without it. Although there is a lack of published evidence, this suggests that vitamin E is crucial to human reproduction and pregnancy.

However, when it comes to animal fats, the vitamin E content of fats from grass-fed animals is 4 times that of grain-fed animals, making grass-fed, raw butter a superior source of vitamin E.

And vitamin E is useful for many more reasons.

As if that wasn’t enough to convince you of why raw butter is an essential food for pregnant women, butter also provides arachidonic acid, which is crucial for the healthy skin, intestinal integrity, and brain function of an unborn baby.

At this point, you might be thinking, ‘I thought saturated fats weren’t healthy for pregnant women’?

Within the medical establishment, saturated fats have gained an unfair reputation for being unhealthy, especially for pregnant women. Studies have even attempted to blame saturated fat consumption for congenital heart defects in children and brain inflammation.

Yet, almost half of the fat in human breast milk is saturated (and that is on a standard seed oil-rich American maternal diet). Given this, how can saturated fats be bad for unborn babies?

Answer - they can’t. What these “studies” fail to mention is that in much of this research, participants are still eating foods high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, or PUFAs. The demonization of saturated fats is therefore completely unjustified.

3. Egg Yolks

We already know that eggs are nutrition bombs, and egg yolks specifically contain a plethora of nutrients crucial to the health of mother and baby, including vitamins A, D, and E, and biotin. However, it’s their folate and choline content that is particularly alluring here.

Sufficient intake of folate during pregnancy can prevent brain and spinal cord defects, as well as increase the baby’s birth weight. It can also prevent spontaneous abortion, psychological disorders, and deformations of mouth, face, and heart.

While many mothers are encouraged to take synthetic folate supplements, the body’s conversion of synthetic folic acid into usable forms is less than optimal to say the least.

As you know by now, I am not an advocate of synthetic supplements, and artificial folic acid is no exception.

Getting enough folate as a pregnant woman is vital, but don’t be fooled into thinking the only way you can get enough of this nutrient is through synthetic supplementation, which many pregnancy books claim. Egg yolks are excellent sources of the stuff. And, when eaten alongside foods high in zinc like red meat and liver, your body’s ability to absorb the folate will be optimized.

egg yolks are goated and this chicken knows it

Closely related to folate is choline.

Choline has a direct role in the development of the baby’s brain, and is responsible for the formation of cholinergic neurons and synapses. A low intake of choline during pregnancy is therefore associated with a greater chance of chronic-stress related illnesses in the baby’s later life as well as a fourfold increase in neural tube (brain and spinal cord) defects.

The RDA of choline for pregnant women is 450mg a day. However, studies on pregnant rats have shown that choline intake 2-3 times the normal requirement produces offspring with incredibly resilient nervous systems that are more robustly protected against neurodegenerative diseases, the effects of neurotoxins, and age-related senility.

Egg yolks contain approximately 115mg of choline per yolk, making them one of the richest sources of this nutrient.

Given that you need at least four egg yolks to meet the government’s inevitably modest RDA, I would say there’s no such thing as too many yolks.

4. Bone Broths and Collagen

An increased intake of meat, liver, and eggs is essential for pregnancy, but this must be balanced by the addition of glycine-rich foods to the diet. Why?

Meat, liver, and eggs contain methionine. Too much of this amino acid can interrupt cellular communication and contribute to various mental disorders or even cancer. To diffuse the methionine, the body uses glycine.

However, expectant mothers should increase their intake of glycine for other reasons.

1. During pregnancy, glycine is the limiting factor for protein synthesis, and therefore growth, in the unborn baby.

2. Glycine an help protect both mother and baby from the effects of toxins and stress.

So, it seems upping your glycine intake during pregnancy is pretty non-negotiable. If you’re wondering where to find this additional glycine, homemade bone broths made from chicken, duck, beef, or lamb are the perfect source.

Or, jello. My wife has been craving homemade jello for weeks, made with grass fed beef gelatin (a form of collagen).

5. Lacto-fermented Foods

Last but not least, lacto-fermented foods. Preventing the absorption of chemicals that are potentially harmful to the baby and encouraging the growth of friendly gut bacteria are important facets of a healthy pregnancy.

Foods like kefir, yoghurt, and sauerkraut are all great sources of enzymes, lactic acid, and good bacteria which provide an intestinal defence against environmental toxins.

Honorable Mention: Sea Foods

1. Fish Eggs

Debate has long raged over whether pregnant women should eat seafood. Those who object cite high mercury levels in fish as potentially dangerous for the cognitive development of unborn babies, but the jury is very much still out on this.

To write off seafood for expectant mothers would also be to neglect the proven reproductive benefits of things like caviar, or fish eggs, which are packed full of vitamins A, B12, and D, choline, selenium, calcium, magnesium, vitamin A, zinc, iodine, and much more - all crucial for a healthy pregnancy.

In fact, as Weston Price observed, fish eggs have long been venerated by cultures around the world as a potent fertility superfood, so they are definitely worthy of a mention in this post.

2. Cod Liver Oil

This is a potentially controversial one for me. You’re probably aware that fish oils are bad, but I can’t ignore the evidence that suggests cod liver oil might be beneficial for pregnant women and their unborn babies.

The benefits of course come from the extremely high vitamin content of CLO. It’s healthy despite the PUFAs, not because of them.

Yet, studies have suggested that the children of mother’s who supplemented cod liver oil during pregnancy have a higher level of intelligence, a heavier birth weight (which reduces the risks associated with a low birth weight), and significantly reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes.

If you’re going to supplement cod liver oil, I would recommend investing in an unheated, fermented, high-vitamin option with no synthetic ingredients added (like Rosita).