Nutrition
Lily Reyes
My nutritional journey has been a lengthy one, I grew up eating a lot of McDonalds and Chinese Food takeout. In 2005, I began transitioning out of fast food and into healthy conscious eating. At the time, I thought I knew it all, thinking that wheat bread is better than white bread, or that deli meat was healthy. It wasn’t until 2011 that I learned what High Fructose Syrup was and that deli meat actually contains carcinogens. I began to eliminate all this from my diet and till this day I find myself always cautiously reading all the labels at the supermarket. Ironically that same year I learned I had a benign uterine fibroid the size of a melon. That triggered another level of mindful consumption of foods and began to eliminate/reduce foods or meats containing hormones and steroids. But, don’t get me wrong, I still live a little and eat pizza, fries, and ice-cream.
Today, as a pregnant woman, I’m even more cautious of what I consume. One immediately assumes that maternal nutritional choices are major influencers on both mother and child’s health. Yet, even with all these years of eating healthy, I still had many questions of what I should and shouldn’t eat during pregnancy. During my personal pregnancy experience, I find myself craving a grapefruit every morning before breakfast; and a pear as a late-night snack. So, I had to make sure this was safe, and it turned out it was.