I see a pattern happen with my clients when they get pregnant – they go from feeling confident in their nutrition and lifestyle choices to questioning everything as soon as women find out they are pregnant. Worry sets in, and instead of following their intuition, they take in a ton of outside information based on faulty research and, honestly, guesses.
It’s important to remember that our bodies are designed to carry life. While we want to be smart with nutrition and supplements that can cause harm during pregnancy, I think it’s essential to look at traditional cultures and their principles for pregnancy. Many of these include nutrient-dense foods like organ meats, cod liver oil, and a diet based on mostly whole foods.
You will more than likely have heard that folic acid is necessary for the growth and development of the neural tubes in the fetus, and that a prenatal with this in, as well as other vitamins and minerals is optimal for a healthy pregnancy. Unfortunately, most prenatals on the market are just filled with synthetic vitamins and minerals which our body has a really hard time absorbing and utilising.
What we really need is nutrient dense whole foods that offer a broad variety of everything we need and in the proper levels, like folate, copper, iron, magnesium, B vitamins, vitamin C and iodine. One of the absolute best foods a mother can eat during her pregnancy is beef liver as it contains nearly all the valuable nutrients we need, and is from a whole food source which means the body can easily absorb and use what it needs.
Now I know beef liver is not exactly the most appetising of foods and has a super weird taste, but there are easy ways to get this into your system such as adding it to mince, making a tasty pate, or taking them in the form of capsules. These capsules are made from freeze dried beef liver, are much easier to consume than actual liver, and still contain all the beneficial nutrients. My favourite beef liver capsules come from a company called Heart of Cultures which you can find here. They also have a nice range of other whole foods like vitamin C, bee pollen and collagen.
But isn't beef liver high in vitamin A? And aren't pregnant women not supposed to have too much vitamin A? This recommendation is given because of a study done that linked some birth defects to vitamin A supplementation. The key here is that they were correlated and that this was a recall study–they called the participants and had them do a survey. This typically has a very low accuracy rate. I also think it’s worth noting that the study was on vitamin A supplements and not foods that are high in vitamin A. Hopefully, you know by now that isolated nutrients don’t work the same as a whole food version of that nutrient. Beef liver, for example, has a lot of vitamin A, but it also has a significant serving of copper, which works with vitamin A in the body. While supplementing with an isolated version of vitamin A may be too much (even though many studies show this isn’t an issue), eating the real thing provides a lower dose of vitamin A with other essential nutrients.
How much liver should I eat?
It is generally recommended that women keep organ meat intake to no more than once or twice per week in 100g portion sizes during pregnancy.
I have just touched the surface of beef liver and it's role in a healthy pregnancy. For further reading head here and here. I would also recommend continuing with beef liver in the postpartum days when our body needs those extra nutrients that are lost when we begin to nourish our baby through breastfeeding. Beef liver can also help a lot with those struggling with fertility issues...actually, it's pretty good for everyone all the time hehe.
To a healthy pregnancy!
