Good sources: Fortified cereals are great sources of folic acid. Dark green, leafy vegetables, citrus fruits, and dried beans, peas and lentils are good sources of naturally occurring folate. Food On the one hand, it is well-researched and includes a rich array of information for pregnant folks, their providers, and anyone with an interest in prenatal care. The more I read prenatal literature the more I note how rarely authors cite evidence to support their claims. I can commend Nichols on the breadth of her research and her meticulous use of citations. I learned a lot from this text. It has changed the way I eat and how I think about my nutrition for the better. Her chapters on nutrition, healthy foods, the fourth trimester, and meal plans supported me in making incremental changes in support of my baby’s development. Nutritional management of nausea, food aversions, heartburn, constipation, preeclampsia, and much more. I’m not saying that none of the recommendations have merit, but there are too many sloppy mistakes for me to take the overall message very seriously.

Real Food for Pregnancy - Lily Nichols RDN Real Food for Pregnancy - Lily Nichols RDN

Lily’s second book, Real Food for Pregnancy, is an evidence-based look at the gap between conventional prenatal nutrition guidelines and what’s optimal for mother and baby. With over 930 citations, this is the most comprehensive text on prenatal nutrition to date. These foods should make up just over a 3rd of the food you eat. Instead of refined starchy (white) food, choose wholegrain or higher-fibre options such as wholewheat pasta, brown rice or simply leaving the skins on potatoes. Protein in pregnancy What she's up against: Consider the general effects of environmental toxins on daily health and those of stress on the body. Discovered and pioneered in the 1960-70's or earlier. First embraced in the 1980-90's by the rare, renegade physicians and by environmentalists, and still, in 2019, there are a world of physicians (mostly the elders) who still insist that these things are only mildly involved in your health outcomes. And so it is also with diet and exercise in the world of physicians. Slow change.HOWEVER--it is a LOT of information. If you are someone who is easily overwhelmed by academic writing, take it slowly or seek condensed resources. This book is too important not to try and glean from! Dietary Guidelines for Americans. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture. https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov. Accessed Jan. 19, 2022. Eating healthily often means changing the amounts of different foods you eat, so that your diet is varied, rather than cutting out all your favourites. You can use the Eatwell Guide to get the balance of your diet right. It shows you how much of what you eat should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet. Alas, we wait upon those like Lily, to whom God has given voice to speak on our behalf, and to educate us in the meantime. She did mention several times throughout the book that even if you can't eat organic, pasture-raised etc. That it is still more important to eat nutrient dense food than to avoid because of toxicity concerns. I think she could have said that more, as many women I think would give up because they don't have access to or can't afford to eat completely clean.

Pregnancy diet: Focus on these essential nutrients - Mayo Clinic Pregnancy diet: Focus on these essential nutrients - Mayo Clinic

I'm a bit torn on a point other reviewers have already mentioned, that is, Nichols often states which risk factors are increased due to various nutrient deficiencies but doesn't attach any percentage to the increase. I would love to know, as it could assauge my fears, but including this information would make it read even more like a textbook than it already does. I think she is a revolutionary at the beginning of another shift in the medical industry, where new developments are eventually embraced, albeit decades after they're pioneered. And sadly for the rest of us, still only half-heartedly by the medical profession we all rely upon.On the other hand, while this book draws from a wide spectrum of research, I think it struggles to consistently discern the quality of all that data and as such draw reasonable and relevant conclusions from it for its audience. I get the impression that whenever Nichols comes across studies that associate a particular food ingredient or toxin with the term, “elevated risk” she opts towards recommending avoidance instead of digging deeper to consider the validity of that association, data quality, and the degree of risk. The chapters on foods that don’t build a healthy baby, nutrients and toxins culminate in a punishing list of restrictions and scared the hell out of me at a time when I was already struggling with elevated fears. Suddenly, drinking tap water, eating out, using moisturizer, toothpaste, and so on felt like risks. I’m skeptical that the stress was worth it.