How has your view of healthy eating changed during pregnancy? B Y A T H A R K H A L I D A N D D A F I N A N I S H O R I

How has your view of healthy eating changed during pregnancy? B Y A T H A R K H A L I D A N D D A F I N A N I S H O R I

Hypothesis Decisions based on eating choices would shift towards the healthy alternative to ensure that the health and development of the baby is at its peak. We were particularly interested in investigating whether attitudes towards healthy eating have changed after having more than one child.

Background Research Pregnant women are often overwhelmed with the number of precautions they must take to protect their unborn babies. It can be confusing to try to understand what will and wont affect the baby, and many women struggle with the limited number of things they can do during pregnancy. We found out that some fish and shellfish contain potentially dangerous levels of mercury and a high dosage of this could damage the development of the baby s nervous system. Our research told us that women should consume fresh food rather than processed food in order to reduce exposure to harmful chemicals.

Background Research (Continuation...) It is said that these women should avoid unpasteurised milk and other dairy products because they are more likely to contain the bacteria listeria which could cause listeriosis even a mild form of this infection in a pregnant woman can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth or severe illness in a newborn baby. Legumes are highly considered within the mothers diet because it is rich in folic acid which is vital for the development of the unborn baby s neural tube.

Method In order to carry out our investigation, we needed to speak to women who are currently pregnant or have previously been pregnant we contacted an antenatal clinic however, they were unable to get back to us in time. Therefore, we visited a maternity ward in Queen s hospital but it was not possible to speak to patients. Due to this, we decided to send out emails to all staff at LSHTM who were willing to participate in a mini interview about their pregnancy.

Method (Continuation...) These questions were included in the interview: How have your eating habits changed during the pregnancy? Did you participate in antenatal classes, read books or find other ways of finding information about being healthy during your pregnancy? Did you have difficulty finding clear information on what to eat and what to avoid during pregnancy? Did you know that some fish and shellfish contain potentially dangerous levels of mercury which can damage a developing baby s nervous system? What do you make of this information? Do you think your views and attitudes have changed after having a few children?

Data Analysis Unpasteurised dairy products undercooked meat fish and shellfish liver pate vitamin A We asked the question: Have you been told of any foods to avoid while you are pregnant and if so, why should you avoid them? More than half the responses were aware of the fact that they had to avoid unpasteurised dairy products whereas only a small fraction of those we sampled knew that they had to avoid liver and a high intake of vitamin A.

Data Analysis (Continuation...) We asked the women where they got the information about healthy eating from and this diagram shows the responses. The size of the words corresponds to the frequency that they were said.

Data Analysis (Continuation...) 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Number of those who found it stressful Number of those who ate healthier Those who had more than 1 child found it less stressful in terms of knowing the certain foods that they re allowed to eat therefore as a consequence, there wasn't much emphasis on healthy eating. 1 0 1 2 3 Number of children

Conclusion From our results we found that 71% of the women we asked did make an effort to eat more healthily during their pregnancy to ensure that their unborn child had the needed nutrients to develop and grow healthily. 28% of the sample however, stated that during their pregnancies, due to cravings, sickness and intolerance to certain foods were unable to make a big impact on how healthy they ate and they therefore stuck to just eating what you can, with one woman saying that even if you can t eat everything healthy then it s more important to make sure that you do eat enough food.

Conclusion (Continuation...) An interesting point that arose during our interviews was that some women found it difficult to find clear information on what they should avoid. Some women said the information they were finding was contradictory or there were conflicting views on what foods to avoid therefore making it more stressful for them to decide whether to act on the information they were reading about or not. However most women were stating that the NHS website had clear guidelines which pregnant women should follow. Another interesting point that arose was that those women that had their last pregnancy a while ago were not aware of the same information on what foods to avoid. For example the shellfish and its potentially dangerous levels of mercury. Therefore with information changing on what is acceptable to eat and what isn t it can be quite difficult for a pregnant woman to know whether she could potentially be putting her child in danger. This became apparent in our interviews where most of the older women were unaware of the mercury in the shellfish potentially damaging a developing baby s nervous system whereas most of the younger women were aware and wanted to avoid it.

Conclusion (Continuation...) One of our hypotheses that we wanted to investigate was whether women felt more comfortable with what they should eat and what they should avoid after having more than one child. From our results we saw that 75% of women who had 2 or 3 children found it easier to find information on what to eat due to having gone through the experience before. 25% however said that it was varied in the sense that it depended on any other implications of their pregnancy for example they may have felt more sickness during their second pregnancy therefore making it more of a stressful time for them in wanting to find healthy foods that they could tolerate.

Limitations We did not receive a sample size large enough to be confident that our hypothesis was proven correct. We based our investigation only at LSHTM; as a result, we received biased information regarding eating habits during pregnancy due to the fact that everyone is health conscience and therefore, they would be more aware of the fact that they had to change their diets. During the interviews, we missed out questions to ask some of the women for example, Did you take any vitamins or supplements during your pregnancy? - This lead us to have incomplete results so we couldn t include this information in our data analysis. For our investigation, we wanted an equal number of currently pregnant and non pregnant women however, when we received responses for whether or not they were able to attend the interview, we received more non pregnant women because those who were pregnant were currently on maternity leave. Due to this, our results may have altered slightly because those who were not pregnant were older so their last pregnancy dated back a few years ago and so there s a possibility on a loss of memory on certain details.

Future Research If we were to extend this research, it would be interesting to investigate How do food cravings come about during pregnancy and how they affect the child? This interest arose when we were interviewing the women on how their eating habits changed.