We are all aware of the link that a
pregnant woman has both emotionally and physically with her child and the
effects that anything that happens around her have on the baby, as well as
whatever substance that the future mother introduces to her body—for instance,
what she ingests. Expectant ladies need to eat healthy food; otherwise, their
children could be born with diseases such as diabetes, depression, obesity, or
even cancer.
An oncologist at Duke University,
North Carolina, Randy Jirtle found out along with his associates the reason of
the alimentary effects on their offspring through an experiment on genetically
similar mice that consisted in feeding one group of pregnant mice a standard
diet, while the other group was provided with foods high in B12, folic acid,
choline and betaine.
Jirtle
thinks that the food that contained those elements provided the mice a supply
of methyl molecules; as a consequence, the expression of any of the diseases
mentioned at the beginning in the genome could have been inhibited. Unlike the first
group, the rodents that were fed with extra nutrients bred babies that had less
probability in their genes to develop diabetes, cancer or obesity.
Would
this mean that the typical idea of “eating for two” would be definitely
discarded? What else could help your babies to be born without any illness?
Eating for two for me has always been something exaggerate to say. Can you imagine how much weight a woman would gain if she ate for two people? It is true that while pregnant women need to eat healthier and be better nourished, but that doesn't mean she has to eat more.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that if you eat healthy food during your pregnancy, your baby may have less probability to develop a disease.
I strongly agree that pregnant women need to take care about their diet, given that everything that the future mother does will affect the unborn child for the rest of his or her life after being born. Besides, that "eating for two" myth could be taken as an ad populum fallacy, since a vast number of pregnant women tend to do that and, therefore, they just jump into the bandwagon and do it as well.
DeleteI agree with you guy, the idea that pregnant woman should eat for two is a myth, i think it is just another missconception about pregancy, just like many othe. Of course one of the most important things in pregnancy is having a balanced diet, so the mother is eating as much healthy as she can, because it is a well known fact that everything that the mother do, have an impact in the unborn child.
ReplyDeleteOf course! And it is not only food what has effects on children when they are in their mother's womb, but also the sounds from the environment, the mood of the mother, if she smokes or drinks, the physical effort she does--although it was proven that it is not really necessary for expectant ladies to be all the time sitting or lying in a bed (you can see that in my "Brainshark" presentation).
DeleteI think that pregnant women should eat as much as they need, not as much as they want. Some women eat way too much during pregnancy, and that's when they gain extra weight that it's not always healthy for them or the baby.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that visiting a nutritionist can help women to not gaining too much weight, and that way they would also be helping their babies who, literally, eat everything their mother eats.
The worst thing about that extra weight that expectant women gain is later blamed on their offspring to come; afterwards, they realise that even without their babies in their womb they are bloated as zeppelins! Women who are expecting should go to see a nutritionist to find out what they can eat that would be healthy for both themselves and their child to come.
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