How Pregnancy Changed My Relationship with Food

I’ve never feared food…until I became pregnant.

I’ve spent my career as a registered dietitian aiming to remove the fear around food. In my personal and professional opinion, food should never be feared. It’s meant to be enjoyed and is vital to our experience as human beings.

I was fortunate to grow up in a food secure environment where we always had enough to eat. My parents didn’t diet or restrict food. Food was never presented to my sister and me as good or bad. I didn’t feel guilty for eating when I was hungry or stopping when I was full. And no one in my family commented on my weight or body shape. I believe the combination of these facts contributed to my healthy relationship with food as a child and into my teen years. I went on to study nutrition and my education and career as a dietitian has given me the tools to help others navigate their personal nutrition needs while also dispelling myths and the fear that often follows misconceptions common in nutrition.

But something changed when I became pregnant.

I must preface this for anyone who might be wondering how a dietitian can have questions about food during pregnancy. “But you’re a dietitian, shouldn’t you know this stuff?” Yes and no. The basics of pregnancy nutrition, absolutely. It was a required part of my curriculum, but I don’t specialize in prenatal nutrition. In fact, I actively avoided it throughout my career because I wanted to focus on other areas like sports nutrition. I don’t pretend to suddenly be an expert in nutrition during pregnancy just because I’m pregnant. This left me feeling under-prepared and surprisingly paranoid.

My first appointment, a virtual one with my regular doctor before seeing my OB in person, ended with her giving me a long list of foods that I shouldn’t eat. Among the foods were the usual suspects: no raw fish, no runny eggs, no deli meat. But also included were surprising foods like soft serve yogurt because the machine may harbor bacteria. I’ve come to realize that almost every “do not eat” list of foods for pregnancy is slightly different which leads to an increasingly growing list of foods to avoid during pregnancy depending on where you look. It’s infuriating.

After that first appointment, I immediately cut out caffeine and started obsessively reading every cheese label to confirm pasteurization. Add to this that I was extremely sick in the first few months and unfamiliar foods that never made their way to my plate were suddenly all I craved. I felt simultaneously stressed about my food choices being safe enough for the baby and guilty for opting for the less nutritious foods that I craved. On the one day I did crave more nutrient-dense foods, I went into a total panic when I realized the cheese on my giant, takeout salad may not have been pasteurized. I proceeded to contact customer service and tell the one dietitian friend who knew I was pregnant that I felt like I was losing my mind. She agreed that I was.

Text exchange with customer service at Sweetgreen

Reflecting on the first half of pregnancy and looking forward to the future, post-delivery, I have realized that many of the precautions I have taken and still am taking are warranted, but much of the stress that comes with them is not. My solution has been to eliminate the stress I can control and for me, much of that involves my food choices. With so many unknowns in pregnancy, I had to find a way to chip away at what seems like an unimaginable number of things to be rightfully concerned about.

I’m not a prenatal nutrition expert, so I cannot recommend that someone choose to eat raw fish or unpasteurized cheese during their pregnancy (for those things you should talk with your MD or RDN), but I will say the way we talk about food with pregnant women needs to change. (Don’t even get me started on the article in one of the pregnancy app’s daily email digest that warned me about the dangers of tap water. The clickbait, scare-tactic headlines aimed at pregnant women need to stop.)

“The way we talk about food with pregnant women needs to change.”

I want to see more lists of foods to eat, not foods to avoid. I want less fearmongering and more encouragement. More sound education about the why behind the foods to avoid, the true risk, and safe alternatives. Pregnancy comes with many unknowns and by its very nature can be extremely stressful. Food shouldn’t be on the list of reasons why someone is stressed.