The Better Baby Book (12 page)

Digestive Enzyme Supplements

Taking a high-quality digestive enzyme supplement can help your body digest cooked foods. Raw foods have their naturally occurring enzymes intact, so there is no need to take supplemental enzymes if you are having only salad, for instance. Digestive enzyme supplements don't replace every enzyme found in raw foods, but they reduce the burden on your body when you eat cooked food. There are a dizzying array of digestive enzymes on the market, some much more useful than others. We recommend the higher-quality ones on
www.betterbabybook.com
.

Avocado Power

Avocados have a long history as a food—they were originally cultivated by the Mayans and the Aztecs. Avocados are rich in vitamins E and K, potassium, folate, and monounsaturated fats, which are essential for heart health and low cholesterol. Vitamin K is a central component in blood coagulation, and it has been linked to increased bone mass. In fact, a form of vitamin K2 is a recognized treatment for osteoporosis in Japan. Vitamin K may also play a role in preventing Alzheimer's disease as well as liver and prostate cancer.

As a good source of potassium, avocados help to regulate blood pressure and prevent circulatory complications. Both potassium and the folate in avocados have been linked with a reduced rate of stroke.

There is particular value in putting avocado in your salad. The
Journal
of Nutrition
published a study confirming that the carotenoids in salad vegetables like lettuce and carrots are more bioavailable when consumed with the monounsaturated fats contained in avocados. The participants in this study absorbed far more carotenoids from a salad of spinach, lettuce, and carrots when it was accompanied by even small amounts of avocado. So eating avocado with your salad makes the rest of the salad a lot healthier for you—and your baby!

We rely on avocados for a significant portion of our healthy monounsaturated fat because they are convenient, because guacamole is easy to find at restaurants, and because half an avocado blended into almost anything will give it a pleasant, creamy texture. Our family of four goes through about fifteen to twenty avocados every week, about one per person per day!

About Juicing

If you have a hard time eating enough vegetables, consider drinking fresh vegetable juice. The juice will contain most of the enzymes, minerals, and vitamins present in the vegetables. Some juicing methods do a better job than others of preserving enzymes, but all vegetable juice will be beneficial as long as it is not pasteurized. Vegetable juice does, however, lack much of the dietary fiber that vegetables themselves contain. So if you do choose to get most of your raw vegetables through juice, and if you have a problem with bowel regularity (common in pregnancy), taking a dietary fiber supplement like pectin may be a good idea.

We aren't against juicing. Although it's not as healthy as eating whole vegetables, if that's the only way you can consume raw vegetables, by all means do it. But we advise that you work with a nutritionist or, at minimum, buy a good book on vegetable juicing, because there are lots of things you need to know about the pros and cons of juicing and how to get the most from it.

Low-Sugar Fruits

The lowest-sugar fruits are lemons and limes, followed by blackberries, cranberries, grapefruit, passion fruit, raspberries, and strawberries. When you are going to eat fruit, these are the best choices.

Fruits with an average amount of sugar are apples, apricots, blueberries, cantaloupe, cherries, kiwi, nectarines, oranges, papaya, peaches, pears, pineapple, and plums. It's best to eat these fruits infrequently, as a treat once or twice a week.

Fruits that are very high in sugar really don't belong in a healthy diet for pregnant women. These are bananas, dates, figs, grapes, guava, lychee, mangoes, melons, persimmon, pomegranate, tangerines, raisins, and any other dried fruits. If you do eat these fruits, use them in very small amounts to enhance the flavor of other healthier foods.

Keep in mind that fruit sugar primarily comes in the form of fructose, the sugar that's most damaging to our health. This is why fruits and vegetables are in separate categories on the Better Baby food pyramid.

Nourishing Nuts

Nuts are among the most dense, nutrient-packed foods that nature offers. They are especially valuable for their healthy fatty acids, proteins, and trace minerals. In this section, we'll discuss how to buy, handle, store, and prepare nuts.

The nuts we recommend eating are almonds, cashews, chestnuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, and walnuts.

Of course, it goes without saying that if you're allergic to nuts, you should avoid them, especially when you're pregnant.

“Nuts” That Aren't Nuts

You may notice that soy “nuts,” peanuts, and corn “nuts” are not on the list. These are not really nuts at all—they're legumes (soybeans, peanuts) or a grain (corn). Our reasons for avoiding soy, peanuts, and corn are detailed in chapter 4.

The nutritional benefits of nuts come with some level of risk. Nuts are particularly susceptible to infection with toxic molds, which produce mycotoxins. For that reason, it's ideal to buy whole, raw, shelled nuts that have always been refrigerated or frozen—if you can find them.

Nuts should be raw, because roasting them will chemically alter their nutritive value and fat composition and reduce their positive health effects. Also, nuts contain the amino acid asparagine, which when roasted produces acrylamide, known to cause cancer in animals and believed to be a carcinogen for humans as well.

Nuts should be refrigerated because they are high in fat and become rancid when exposure to warm air causes the fats to oxidize. Storing nuts in the refrigerator or the freezer prevents this from happening. It also protects them from their susceptibility to mold.

Try to find a health-food store that sells whole, organic, raw, refrigerated nuts. Only the best health-food stores carry them, however, and they are expensive. So if you can't find a store that carries them or can't afford to pay for them, we recommend that at a minimum you should buy nuts that are whole and not chopped, because the outer layer of the kernel can protect the nut from mold. It's even better to buy nuts in the shell, because the shell protects the nut.

There's a lot of overlap among the different kinds of nuts and their nutritional values. For example, almost all nuts are rich in monounsaturated fats, which are healthy for your circulatory system and have been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. But each nut also offers its own particular health benefits. Here are the specific benefits of each nut (the nuts are listed in alphabetical order):

• Almonds
  are an excellent source of copper, vitamin E, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, riboflavin (vitamin B2), and tryptophan. This unique vitamin and mineral profile helps to reduce stress and control after-meal blood sugar surges. Keeping blood sugar under control supports a stable energy level throughout the day. Almonds are also high in monounsaturated fats that reduce the risk of heart disease and promote a healthy cholesterol level. They're also relatively resistant to molds and rarely contain mycotoxins. Raw almond butter is a great way to include almonds in your daily menu.
  
• Brazil nuts
  are rich in selenium, a mineral that is central to proper thyroid function, but are very heavily contaminated with mycotoxins. We avoid them for that reason.
  
• Cashews
  contain high amounts of copper and magnesium. Copper deficiency has been linked to several health problems like anemia and white blood cell disorders.
  
• Chestnuts
  are lower in fat than other nuts and are higher in starches and sugars. They are a great source of essential minerals, including iron, zinc, copper, and manganese. We do not eat chestnuts often, however, because of their carbohydrate content.
  
• Hazelnuts
  are one of the richest sources of vitamin E in all of nature. The vitamin E in hazelnuts is more biologically active and useful to your body than synthetic vitamin E supplements. There are eight different forms of vitamin E, and hazelnuts contain most of them.
  
• Macadamia nuts
  are one of the best sources of monounsaturated fats. An astounding 80 percent of the fat in macadamia nuts is monounsaturated (that's even higher than olive oil), and much of it is omega-7 fatty acids, which are known for maintaining skin health. Studies have proved that macadamia nuts lower LDL (bad) cholesterol.
  
• Pecans
  are loaded with great fats, vitamins, and nutrients, especially thiamine, zinc, and manganese. They also contain more antioxidants by volume than any other nut.
  
• Pine nuts
  are a great source of memory-boosting omega-9 fatty acids, iron, and magnesium.
  
• Pistachios
  have a nutrition profile that rivals all the nuts we've discussed so far. They're richest in copper, manganese, and phosphorus. Pistachios also contain lots of folate, biotin, thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, and pantothenic acid—all of which are part of the vitamin B family. Pistachios are the only nuts that contain significant amounts of carotenoids, lutein, and zeaxanthin. They're also higher in dietary fiber than most other nuts. Pistachios do tend to have a higher risk of mold, so inspect them before eating them.
  
• Walnuts
  are the unqualified kings of omega-3 fatty acid content, and they have substantial omega-6 as well. Like the other nuts, walnuts have a lot of vitamins and minerals. If you choose to eat only one of the nuts on this list, choose walnuts, but don't cook with them because that will oxidize their oils and create free radicals.
  

Collagen Keeps It All Together

Collagen is the central building block for a variety of structurally important tissues, including bone, cartilage, tendons, and ligaments. Collagen is also found in skin, other organs, and even blood. It is the most abundant fibrous protein in the human body.

Even though our bodies are designed to manufacture collagen, they need the right combination of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals to do so. Since our bodies will selectively use these materials to meet short-term needs for other processes, a shortage may develop, and poorly formed collagen will result. Our program calls for a pregnant woman to add plenty of high-quality collagen to her diet, along with collagen building blocks like vitamin C. We feel confident that since Lana took plenty of collagen throughout both pregnancies, our children's bones and organs had plenty of body-building collagen available in utero. We also believe that collagen supplementation, along with a high healthy-fat diet, is what prevented Lana from getting even a single stretch mark despite having two children after age forty.

When most people think of collagen, they think of soft skin, shiny hair, and full lips. They are absolutely right—collagen helps you to have all of those assets. Collagen is a key component of hair, skin, and nails. As hormones fluctuate during the course of pregnancy, a woman's skin and hair change dramatically. Taking extra collagen keeps them beautiful.

But a little-known and very important fact about collagen is its function as a semiconductor of electricity. Why is that a good thing?

Collagen's ability to conduct electricity inside the body makes it central to the communication between cells, which leads to optimum growth and healing. This may sound a little far-out, but it's not. The research that discovered this led to a new way to heal bone fractures in limbs that would have previously required amputation, and it therefore also led to two Nobel Prize nominations.

Healthy joints that are full of properly hydrated collagen serve to facilitate the electrical flow required for good cell communication. Perhaps the most important everyday function of this intercellular communication is that it helps the cells work together to eliminate their own toxic waste products. The most noticeable health effects of the efficient disposal of toxins will be smoother skin, properly functioning joints, and higher energy—exactly the effects that we noticed from taking two or three tablespoons of a nearly flavorless collagen supplement in a smoothie every day. We give our children supplemental collagen, too, which we started doing as soon as they were able to drink anything other than breast milk.

The average American diet usually doesn't provide enough of the amino acids required to make optimal levels of well-formed collagen. Just as a carpenter can't make tables without wood, the body can't make collagen without the necessary raw materials. When the body can't make enough collagen, it becomes more susceptible to injury and heals more slowly. Even if you drink enough water, your body has a hard time staying hydrated when there is a shortage of collagen in your tissues. This can lead to a buildup of toxins and related problems, especially when you must meet the new demands of pregnancy. Pregnant mothers will therefore be particularly vulnerable to the effects of collagen deficiency. Evidence of collagen deficiency can be seen in stretch marks, easy bruising, brittle hair that falls out after delivery, sagging skin, and even nosebleeds.

There are dozens of forms of collagen supplementation on the market, including common gelatin. The collagen we believe to be the best for you is called hydrolyzed collagen, or collagen hydrolysate, because it is the form most easily absorbed by the body.

But please note that we are recommending it as a supplement to and not a replacement for other kinds of protein. In the 1970s, hydrolyzed collagen became a very popular dietary supplement. Unfortunately, many companies promoted it as part of an extremely low-calorie liquid protein diet aimed at weight loss, and they misrepresented it as being a legitimate “sole” source of protein. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although hydrolyzed collagen contains the amino acids that many people need (and are deficient in), it's an incomplete protein and does not contain a number of essential amino acids. So hydrolyzed collagen should never be considered a complete protein for anyone, least of all for a pregnant woman. But it is an excellent supplement to build healthy tissues.