Nutrition

As any newly pregnant woman will tell you, once people find out you are expecting, everything you do, wear and eat suddenly becomes everyone's business. Nowhere is that more true than in China, where as a pregnant mom I was admonished for wearing lipstick, eating curry and choosing to exercise until the 36th week of my pregnancy.

Along with that comes the belief that moms need a lot of extra food to support the growth of the fetus. In many cultures, expectant mothers are encouraged to eat liberally. The more the better, right?

Actually, no.

For a start, just ten percent of a fetus' growth happens during the first half of pregnancy. The remaining 90 percent happens during the second half. In the first half, the fetus is literally modeling itself by creating the human anatomy in its most basic outline. This is the time when the brain is formed, fingers outlined and a rudimentary heart starts to pump for the first time.

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Summer is a great time to explore the countryside that surrounds Beijing and experience the simple life. Typical road-trip fare in China, however, often involves fast food, bags of chips, and lots and lots of sodas. These foods are full of unhealthy fats, which means loads of calories and little valuable nutrition. Just a couple days on a diet like this could leave you and your family fatigued, crabby and prone to stomachaches or headaches. However, with a little planning and willpower, you can navigate your way around the junk food and maintain a healthy diet even on a long road trip. 

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Beijing's organic produce is questionable, air quality is an ongoing problem, and little stomach bugs are never far away. So what can you do to fight off those nasties and keep your family healthy? Start with a green smoothie. All you need is a blender, a handful of leafy greens and some fresh fruit.

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The family dinner table may be one of the most underestimated places for improving your family's eating habits and overall nutrition. For younger children, family mealtimes provide much-needed predictability and comfort. They also help develop your child's language and communication skills, and give you an opportunity to coach and monitor their behavior. In fact, numerous studies have identified a higher frequency of family mealtimes as an important factor in avoiding childhood obesity.

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If your family went hunting for treats this Easter Sunday, you may have found a powerful nutrient hidden in an unexpected place: the chocolates. Not the cloyingly sweet milk chocolates, mind you, but the dark chocolates, which contain a treasure trove of nutrients.

Among these is magnesium, the underappreciated hero usually ignored in favor of its better-known cousins, calcium and iron. Magnesium works alongside calcium and phosphorous to create strong, healthy bones and proper nerve and muscle function. It is so important that a deficiency of magnesium can trigger muscle tension as well as spasms, cramps, fatigue and even migraines in some people.

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I'm often asked for tips on how to get children to eat. In theory, parents are supposed to put a variety of healthy foods in front of their child and the child is supposed to eat enough to meet his or her needs. However, the truth is that all parents (myself included), worry that their children are not consuming enough vegetables, fruit, milk or even food in general. This can result in a tendency to shove food in front of our children, convinced that they need the nutrition. Here are four questions to help parents get to the heart of the problem:

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I’m the first to admit that soda pop tastes great. It is, in fact, so good that a huge number of parents find it hard to resist the urge to pop a can for themselves once in a while. You may perhaps be one of them. With that can in hand, you may also decide one day that letting your child have a sip or two couldn’t do any harm. After all, it’s just an occasional thing, right?

But not so fast. Those occasional little sips can be where the “addiction” starts. Be it at a birthday party or in a restaurant, those innocent little sips can add up to a lot of sugar. So before you stick that straw in the can, let’s check a few fizzy facts.

A single 12-ounce (350ml) can of soda may contain as much as 10 tsps of sugar. That’s almost a 1/4 of a cup! Having just one can of soft drink a day can raise a child’s risk of obesity as much as 60 percent.

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I don’t know about you, but I am a total sucker for those “Melt away the fat!” and “Eat your way to a flat belly!” headlines on the cover of women's magazines. With a hopeful heart and a serious suspension of disbelief, I flip to the corresponding pages, almost believing that my pants will feel looser upon hitting that magic article.

And you know what I find every single time, without fail?
Grilled chicken. That’s the secret to everything. Grilled. Chicken. Sometimes accompanied by steamed broccoli, sometimes carrot slices, always bland looking – there’s not even an optimistic mustard pot in the picture. True – grilled chicken is the most easily identifiable, controlled protein you can get your hands on,  but the chicken that appears in these diets is the stuff of science, not food. It’s all about calorie counting, and treats the joy of eating like an invading army that needs to be battled.

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You made it! Your beautiful baby has been born. After months of fussing over food labels, you are finally free!

But hold on. You will need plenty of energy and stamina over the coming months. Even if you don’t breastfeed you will still be eating for two in many ways. And that means loading up on the right nutrients and getting a well-balanced diet. If you’re  breastfeeding, you only need to add 300 calories on top of your pre-pregnancy requirements. That isn’t much: A banana with peanut butter on it or a tuna salad sandwich will do the trick. Simply eating lots of fruit, vegetables, whole grains and some protein will be fine for most women’s post- pregnancy recovery needs.

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Nutrition plays such a significant role in building a new life that women planning on parenthood should start considering nutrition well before pregnancy begins.

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