Vegan for Life - Jack Norris [53]
MATT BALL
Co-founder of Vegan Outreach
• Taco made with Gimme Lean, ground-beef style, and Ortega taco seasoning
• Topped with refried beans, Daiya cheese, Tofutti sour cream, and hot sauce
• Spanish rice
NEAL BARNARD, MD
President and founder of the
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
• Green salad with light vinaigrette
• Capellini (angel hair pasta) with arrabbiata sauce
• Broccoli, spinach, and carrots, all steamed and served with lemon wedges
SUE HAVALA-HOBBS, DPH, RD
Director, Doctoral Program in Health Leadership,
School of Public Health, University of North Carolina;
and co-author of the American Dietetic Association’s 1988
and 1993 Position on Vegetarian Diets
• Kale cooked with soy-ginger sauce, tempeh cubes, and toasted pine nuts over steamed rice
• Steamed carrots
• Whole-grain dinner roll
• Baked apple with vanilla soy yogurt
MELANIE JOY, PHD
Psychologist and author of
Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows
• Pizza with whole-wheat crust (from Trader Joe’s) topped with organic tomato sauce with crushed garlic, Field Roast apple sage sausage, baby spinach, black olives, and Daiya cheese
• Mesclun mix salad with goddess dressing or sautéed kale with slivered garlic and toasted almonds
• Sliced Asian pear sprinkled with cinnamon for dessert
CHAPTER 9
A HEALTHY START
Vegan Diets in Pregnancy and Breast-Feeding
Family members, friends, and even your health-care provider might express surprise and concern at the idea of a vegan pregnancy. But vegan diets can easily meet the nutritional needs of you and your growing baby. The proof comes from a 1987 study of 775 women living on the Farm, a vegan community in Tennessee.1 The researchers looked at weight gain in pregnant women and birth weights of their babies—two important measures of a healthy pregnancy. They found that the women’s vegan diets had no effect on the birth weights of their babies and that their own weight gain during pregnancy was adequate. In fact, these women actually gained a little bit more than women in the general meat-eating population. And the longer they had been vegan, the better their weight gain.
One other finding was surprising: Preeclampsia, a potential complication of pregnancy that occurs in 5 to 10 percent of pregnant women, was nearly nonexistent among vegan pregnant women living on the Farm. Along with another smaller study, these findings give reassurance that vegan diets are safe and healthy for pregnancy.
In some studies of women following very restrictive diets, particularly macrobiotic diets, infants sometimes had lower birth weights. In these cases, it wasn’t a vegan diet that was to blame. Rather, the diets at issue were too low in fat and calories. It’s important to note that the findings about poor pregnancy outcomes are from older studies when vegans had less access to nutrition information and a variety of vegan foods. That’s all changed dramatically in the past several decades, and today it’s easier than ever to plan a healthy vegan pregnancy.
GETTING ENOUGH CALORIES
Although adequate weight gain is important for a healthy vegan pregnancy, eating for two doesn’t mean eating twice as many calories. On average, pregnant women need an extra 340 calories per day during the second trimester and 450 extra calories during the last three months of pregnancy. But needs for certain nutrients increase by as much as 50 percent, so packing a lot of good nutrition into that little bit of extra food is important.
Pregnant women can follow the vegan food guide in Chapter 7 with just a few adjustments that we’ve shown in the Modified Food Guide for Pregnancy and Breast-feeding on page 140. An added serving each of whole grains and leafy green vegetables and two additional servings of protein-rich foods (legumes, nuts, and soyfoods) will give you needed calories and help meet nutrient needs during the second trimester. During the last trimester, when your baby is growing fastest, add one more serving of either