We all want to give our children the very best start in life.
And we all know the food we eat plays a major part in how healthy we are, and that
eating healthy in pregnancy is not only good for us, but also good for the baby that is growing inside us.
The problem?
Pregnancy cravings often have a mind of their own, and that combined with feeling all sorts of sick and puke-y, well, let's just say it's easy to fall off the wagon and and give into those cravings on the regular.
However, according to a
new study, making sure you eat plenty of greens when you are expecting can have a huge impact on your baby's future health – reducing his or her chance of developing asthma by a whopping 40 percent.
A team of researchers, including some from the National Center for Child Health and Development in Japan, spent over two years studying 310 groups of pregnant women and their children who visited the center between May 2010 and November 2013. During that time, the researchers compared a group of mothers-to-be who consumed fewer vegetables (78 grams per day) against a group that consumed a large amount (286 grams per day) during the first 16 weeks of their pregnancy.
The result? The researcher found that the 2-year-olds born to the mothers who ate more vegetables had about a 40 percent less chance of exhibiting symptoms of asthma—think wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath—than the toddlers whose mothers ate fewer vegetables.
And it turns out too that all vegetables are not creaed equal, with spinach and asparagus, which are high in folic acid, and cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli and cabbage, which are high in iron, being mentioned as especially important.
