What to Eat When You're Expecting Review

Posted by Juanita Avenue on Sunday, October 3, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Confusing, Contradictory, and Out-of-Date
This entry from the popular What to Expect series will disappoint, confuse, or confound most readers, even fans of series.Although it provides some guidelines, they don't translate into a coherent diet that's possible to actually follow.In a word, it's restrictive, although the authors authorize some cheating. (Yes, once a month you can have a scoop of ice cream or a bran muffin, but NOT both!)
Written in 1986, the book packs in plenty of nutritional information, however, it's a safe bet that nutrition and pregnancy guidelines have changed in the past 17 years.Like many diet books, it starts by selling the benefits of the system (and warning of the dire consequences of failure).Following the traditional diet book map, it next evaluates your current eating habits (possibly giving you this score: "Under 70 means you've let everything you ever heard or read about nutrition pass you by. If you want a healthy baby and a comfortable and safe pregnancy, start taking the Daily Dozen as seriously as the Ten Commandments - now.") After scaring you - er - scoring you, the book moves into tips for changing your eating habits.
As its cornerstone, it introduces the "Daily Dozen," 12 servings that a pregnant body needs.Unfortunately, it skimps on the guidelines for what equals a serving. The section with examples has only 10 pages and it's buried in the middle of a chapter.Although the authors point out that one food can stand for several servings (milk is a 1/3 of a protein, a calcium, and something else ... I just spent 15 minutes flipping through the book trying to find this part, but I still can't.), they fail to list of such ingredients in a way that's actually useful.
In the chapter about what's safe to eat and what's not, I worry about the information being 17 years old (there's no mention of Listeria, but half a page on the Alar scare). There's also a contradiction about alcohol. The authors write, "What it [research] does mean is that a pregnant woman should give up alcohol completely. Don't even use wines or other alcoholic beverages in cooking, since recent research shows that alcohol does not fully evaporate." A few pages later in the recipe section, they include wine in the recipe for Quick Fix Chicken and sherry or Madeira in the ingredients for a Holiday Wassail bowl.Also, the egg nog recipe uses raw eggs.
The authors are prejudiced against all refined sugars and honey, although they happily substitute frozen apple juice concentrate to make treats just as sweet.Personally, I don't see much difference between sugar from honey and fruit sugar mixed in water.Although this kind of substitution was popular in the 80's, I don't know if it's effective. In my experience, it just manages to ruin a nice recipe.
The appendices include a handful of menus (but not enough), a chart showing the evils of junk food, Chemical Cuisine - a chart that explains common food additives, and several charts describing the nutritional needs of pregnant and lactating women.
Personal Experience:
I bought this book before pregnancy to start good nutritional habits.Some of the information in the book was enlightening, but difficult to put into practice without more guidance.I found it confusing, restrictive, and time-consuming.Ultimately I gained weight even though I followed (or thought I followed) pre-pregnancy guidelines.I gave up on the diet long before my pregnancy test came back positive.Instead, I incorporated some suggestions into a simpler, less restrictive diet.
This book has good points, including:
*The daily dozen may ensure you get important nutrients, if you can figure out how to follow it.
*The book includes suggestions for dealing with morning sickness.If these suggestions work for you, great.If they don't, you'll probably feel even worse after reading the guilt-trip that you're starving your baby when you can't force down or keep down your whole daily dozen.
*Best Odds Shopping (1st ed., pp. 160-174) provides an overview of misleading information on nutritional labels. True, some of this may have changed with newer label guidelines, but it's still useful information.
*Some of the recipes are great. Favorites include the Quick Fix Chicken, Chicken Au Gratin, Whole-Wheat Pizza, and Better-Than-Milk Shake.A longer recipe section would be helpful.
*The Chemical Cuisine chart is enlightening - although it may include ingredients that have been removed from the market or miss new ones to avoid.
*Tips for women with dietary restrictions are included, but they will probably need to find more specific information elsewhere.
With so many cons, I'll just review the key ones:
*Published in 1986, it's out-of-date.
*It includes contradictory information.
*It's unnecessarily confusing and hard to use.
*Poor organization - narrative sections and reference sections should be separated and use more effective layouts.
*More specific guidelines for actually using the diet are needed (better charts of food servings, more recipes, more menus).
This may be a book for you if:
*you collect the What-to-Expect series.
*you don't mind being scolded for doing things wrong without being told how to do them right.
*you try restrictive diets as a hobby.
*you have enough nutritional expertise to disregard the parts that are inaccurate, inappropriate and out-of-date.
If your diet is already heavy on the wheat germ and you have unlimited time to prepare meals, you won't find this system as much of a chore as a Twinkie-addict would, but there must be better, more recent books available.
The Last Word:
No matter who you are, this book should not be your first or only choice for pregnancy nutrition.

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