Tips for a healthy diet
Eating healthily during your pregnancy will make all the difference to your growing baby - and to you! The advice below will help you stay on track.
Top Ten Tips
- Choose foods from each of the food groups in adequate amounts to ensure a balanced diet.
- Have 3 regular meals and 2 to 3 light snacks a day.
- Include generous helpings of fruits and vegetables, wholegrain cereals and beans to increase your fibre intake.
- Drink water regularly - at least 8 glasses a day.
- Include other drinks in your diet such as low-fat milk, fresh fruit juices and soup.
- Eat one portion of oily fish and 1 portion of white fish each week.
- Use vegetable oils such as corn, olive and sunflower oil in your cooking, but use them sparingly.
- Limit your intake of processed and preserved foods as they usually contain high levels of sodium (salt).
- Reduce caffeine intake to no more than 4 cups of caffeine containing drinks a day.
- Limit intake of sweets, crisps, cakes, biscuits, fats, oils and sugar. These all provide extra calories but not much of the nutritional value that you and your baby need. Over-indulging now means it will be harder to regain your pre-pregnancy weight afterwards. So there’s really no incentive!
Foods and drinks to avoid
Healthy eating during pregnancy is as much about what foods to avoid as what foods to eat. Read more »
Some food may harm your baby as well as making you ill, so food safety needs to be a priority. Now that you’re pregnant, leave the following foods out of your diet:
- Undercooked or raw eggs, or foods likely to be made with them, (including home-made mousses, ice cream and mayonnaise, all of which may be made with raw eggs).
- Undercooked or very rare meat, chicken and fish.
- Raw fish or meat in dishes like sushi or steak tartare and smoked salmon.
- Unpasteurised milk, cheese or yoghurt, soft cheeses like brie, camembert, ricotta or blue veined cheeses (ordinary cheddar cheese or cottage cheese is fine as long as it is made with pasteurised milk - check the label!).
- Pate or liver - these can have excessive amounts of vitamin A which can harm your baby.
- Swordfish, marlin, shark and tuna. These fish can contain mercury which can harm your baby’s developing nervous system. If you can’t live without tuna, eat it once a week at most.
- Peanuts - avoid during pregnancy and breastfeeding especially if there is a family history of allergy.
- Alcohol - excessive alcohol intake has been associated with many foetal problems, and even moderate alcohol consumption can impact on the development of your baby’s brain. So the safest bet is to avoid alcohol altogether.
