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What Is A Good, Nutritious, Balanced Diet?
Every day of the week, you and your baby must have:
1. One quart (4 cups) of milk. Any kind will do: whole milk, low fat, skim, powdered, or buttermilk. If you do not like milk, you can substitute one cup of yogurt for each cup of milk.
2. Two eggs.
3. One or two servings of fish, shellfish, chicken or turkey, lean beef, veal, lamb, pork, liver or kidney.
Alternative combinations include:
o Rice with beans, cheese, sesame, milk
o Cornmeal with beans, cheese, tofu, milk.
o Beans with rice, bulgur, cornmeal, wheat noodles sesame seeds, milk.
o Peanuts with: sunflower seeds, milk.
o Whole wheat bread or noodles with: beans, cheese, peanut butter, milk, tofu.
For each serving of meat, you can substitute these quantities of cheese:
|
Brick |
4 oz. |
|
Longhorn |
3 oz. |
|
Camembert |
6 oz. |
|
Muenster |
4 oz. |
|
Cheddar |
3 oz. |
|
Monterey Jack |
4 oz. |
|
Cottage |
6 oz. |
|
Swiss |
3 oz. |
4. One or two servings of fresh, green, leafy vegetables: mustard, beet, collard, dandelion or turnip greens, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, kale, Swiss chard.
5. Five servings of whole grain breads, rolls, cereals or pancakes: wheatena, 100% bran flakes, granola, shredded wheat, wheat germ, oatmeal, buckwheat or whole wheat pancakes, corn bread, corn tortillas, corn or bran or whole wheat muffins, waffles, brown rice.
6. Two choices from: a whole potato (any style), large green pepper, grapefruit, lemon, lime, papaya, tomato (one piece of fruit, or one large glass of juice).
7. Three pats of butter.
Also include in your diet, in addition to the above (i.e., don't count one food in two categories):
1. A yellow- or orange-colored vegetable or fruit five times a week.
2. Liver once a week, if you like it.
3. Table salt: SALT YOUR FOOD TO TASTE
4. Water: Drink to thirst.
It is not healthy for you and your unborn baby to go even 24 hours without good food!
Certain Things May Prevent You from Having A Good Diet
A good diet sounds simple, doesn't it? But it isn't so simple in our society. Many things may happen to keep you from eating and digesting a good diet each day throughout pregnancy.
You may believe that the foods you see widely advertised on TV and in magazines give you and your baby the proteins, vitamins and minerals you need. Foods such as: boxed cereals, enriched white bread, potato chips, soft drinks, candy, french fries, commercial cakes and cookies, provide expensive, useless "empty" calories. When you spend money on these foods, you are not getting your money's worth of good nutrition. The first items to put in your shopping cart are the foods on the good diet list!
Another situation which may interfere with your good diet is the nausea and vomiting, or heartburn, indigestion and loss of appetite which many women experience in pregnancy. This problem must be corrected quickly, with the help of your doctor, so that you can resume your good eating habits.
If you are overweight at the beginning of your pregnancy, you may think that now is a good time to try to lose some of that extra weight. Pregnancy is not the time to go on a low-calorie diet. There is evidence that your baby's brain is growing at its most rapid rate during the last two months of pregnancy. Mothers who follow low-calorie diets risk stunting the growth of their babies' brains.
The Dangers of Bad Diet
Forty years of medical research has proved that bad diets during pregnancy cause:
1. Stillborn babies.
2. Low birth weight or premature babies.
3. Brain damaged babies with less intelligence.
4. Hyperactive babies with more irritability.
5. Infection-prone babies with more illness.
A good diet will protect your baby from these troubles.
Bad diets cause diseases in mothers too:
1. Metabolic Toxemia of Late Pregnancy (MTLP) - a disease caused by not enough good quality proteins and vitamins in the diet. Women with MTLP suffer convulsions or "fits", coma, heart failure, shock, fat in their livers, bleeding into their livers, and often death for both mother and baby. It is estimated that in the United States 30,000 babies die each year of MTLP and thousands more live with damage to their brains. They suffer cerebral epilepsy and other nervous system disorders.
A good diet will protect you and your baby from MTLP.
2. Anemia’s ("low blood") - caused by not enough iron, vitamins and/or proteins in the diet.
A good diet will protect you from anemias.
3. Abruption of the Placenta - a disease in which the placenta (or "afterbirth") breaks loose inside the mother's womb, often before labor begins. The mother bleeds, and the baby dies in 50% of the cases.
A good diet will protect you and your baby from Abruption of the Placenta.
4. Severe infections of the lungs, kidneys and liver.
A good diet will protect you and your baby from severe infections.
5. Miscarriage - if the mother does not have a good diet, the placenta grows imperfectly and cannot meet the needs of the developing baby, and a miscarriage results.
A good diet will protect you and your baby from miscarriages.
Dr. Thomas Brewer is this century's foremost crusader for healthy mothers and babies. In the sixties he stopped drug companies from promoting diuretics for pregnant women with preeclampsia/toxemia, and he eliminated toxemia completely from his own obstetrical practice with what has since come to be called The Brewer Medical Diet for Normal and High-Risk Pregnancy.
Dr. Brewer advocates a simple regimen of good nutrition to prevent and in some cases even reverse a host of common complications of pregnancy, including toxemia, low birth weight, prematurity, and preterm labor. His prescription is so simple it has been largely ignored by the modern medical community, but has been proven over literally centuries of recorded medical history, and forty-plus years of scientific research.
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