The Better Baby Book (14 page)

The Better Baby Book Nutrition Guidelines

We have just presented you with an almost dizzying array of information, some of which challenges conventional dietary wisdom. Please don't feel like you need to do everything in this chapter to give your baby a good start in life. The reason our book is called
The Better Baby Book
instead of
The Perfect Baby Book
is that your goal should be improvement rather than perfection. The pursuit of perfection can only lead to feelings of failure, which will undermine rather than enhance your health.

That said, the information in this chapter can help you to be more conscious of your diet's effect on both your own body and your baby's growing body. Although our diet is designed for a healthy pregnancy, it is equally suited to helping your body create optimal breast milk and to giving you the energy and stamina you need to wake up several times a night to nourish your little one with that breast milk.

We've included the diagrams to help you track our recommendations and decide which are right for you. So you can see how healthy foods compare to unhealthy ones, we include the good foods from this chapter as well as the foods to avoid mentioned in chapter 4. We also explain how costly or difficult it is to buy, prepare, and eat foods the Better Baby way, and we give hints to make things easier for you.

Proteins

Meat from grass-fed animals costs a lot at restaurants or from gourmet butchers, but if you order it online, it costs little more than beef from grain-fed cows from the average butcher. For one adult, high-end protein powders cost about a dollar per day.

If you cook at home or pack your own lunch, there's no difference in convenience. If you eat out, it may be harder (as well as more expensive) to find meat from grass-fed animals or the recommended kinds of seafood.

Protein Hints

• Eat eggs poached or soft-boiled with runny yolks to preserve choline and omega-3 for your baby's nervous system. Farmers' market or free-range organic eggs are best.
  
• Eating meat from grass-fed animals once a day will do wonders for your health. As easy to prepare as other meats, it's available at many farmers' markets, from lots of good butchers, at most Whole Foods stores, or online in bulk.
  
• We take two to four tablespoons of hydrolyzed collagen every day, in a smoothie or just in water. It has very high health benefits but is somewhat costly compared to whey, which we also take sometimes.
  
• One or two tablespoons of whey protein concentrate added to a smoothie or water is a fast, easy source of protein, but it's not necessary if you are eating meat and eggs and taking collagen.
  

Oils and Fats

It does cost more to “live off the fat of the land,” but it's one of the most important recommendations in this book. High-end fat sources are expensive because they are highly sought. Choosing your fats wisely will change your life and improve your baby's future.

Using the right healthy fats at home is easy, but many chain restaurants don't even serve pure butter anymore, instead favoring a mix of margarine and butter. Restaurants usually use unhealthy oils (like canola) for cooking, too. Since eating healthy oils and fats usually means cooking at home, this can be difficult.

Oil and Fat Hints

• Olive oil is great in salad dressing. We drizzle it over cooked vegetables sometimes, too, but we never cook with it because cooking spoils the oil's health benefits.
  
• Cooking with butter from grass-fed cows minimizes oxidation and tastes good, too! To minimize oxidation you can also cook with expeller-pressed coconut oil or with MCT oil, which are both flavorless.
  
• Blend coconut oil or MCT oil into salad dressings and sauces to get the key healthy fats they contain. Coconut milk, a source of healthy coconut oil, goes great in smoothies and Asian soups. Fresh young coconuts are also a delectable way to get the health benefits of coconut.
  
• Adding a spoonful of non-GMO soy lecithin to any drink, smoothie, or salad dressing gives your baby brain-building choline.
  

Vegetables and Fruits

Some of the healthiest vegetables, like cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens, and kale, are also some of the cheapest vegetables. It takes some work to buy, wash, and prepare fresh vegetables, but it's definitely worth the effort.

Vegetable and Fruit Hints

• Avocados are a key source of Better Baby building blocks, they satisfy your appetite, and they're very fast to cut up and eat. They're also cheap if you buy them in bulk. Overall, they're one of our absolute favorites.
  
• If you're craving something sweet, low-sugar fruits like raspberries are a great choice. But remember, eating sugar makes you crave more sugar and won't give you long-lasting energy the way that healthy fat will.
  
• Making salads and salad dressings is easier with a blender or a food processor.
  
• If you have difficulty eating lots of vegetables, try chopping or grating them into coleslaw-like mixtures or juicing them.
  

Nuts and Legumes

As a quick snack, nuts are more expensive than pretzels, chips, and other unhealthy alternatives, but the health benefits make them an excellent choice. Adding nuts to your diet is simple—they're easy to carry around with you for snacking on the go, no preparation is required, and they're widely available.

Nut and Legume Hints

• Almond butter spread on celery is a great snack and a fast, easy source of healthy fats and energy.
  
• It's true that beans and lentils contain healthy protein. Unfortunately, however, they're full of lectins that cause health problems for lots of people. That's why we avoided them during pregnancy. If you'd like to enjoy beans, there are supplements on the market that deactivate lectins and make beans a bit healthier. We maintain a list of quality lectin-blocking supplements on our website,
  www.betterbabybook.com/lectins
  .
  
• Lots of soy products are marketed as health foods. Don't be deceived—they're terrible for you!
  

Grains

Most grains are cheap, but it's better to avoid them, whether they're refined or whole. The difficulty with grains isn't in preparing them or finding the right ones. The difficulty is in avoiding them. It's hard to avoid grains, because they're so common in the American diet, and it takes a conscious effort to stop eating them. But if you stick to it for thirty days, you'll find a whole new level of wellness.

Grain Hints

• White rice is the healthiest option you have for grains. Even this option is high in carbohydrates, though.
  
• Pressure-cooking grains is smart, because the pressure destroys a number of mold toxins.
  
• We rarely eat grains, because avoiding them makes us feel much better.
  

Dairy

Butter from grass-fed cows is marginally more expensive than organic butter, but European brands are sometimes cheaper. Expensive or not, the best, healthiest butter still adds up to only a fraction of your overall food costs and is well worth it. Finding butter from grass-fed cows at grocery stores is usually easy, but it's not available at most restaurants, where your best bet is regular butter or olive oil.

Dairy Hints

• Adding plenty of butter to almost anything makes it delicious—including soups, sauces, and gravies.
  
• Butter from Ireland and New Zealand is naturally from grass-fed cows even when it's not organic. Using butter from these countries is a great way to get your butter at a lower cost.
  
• Avoid cheese—its protein is particularly hard on the body, and it stores mycotoxins.
  
• It's better to skip dairy in a meal rather than eat it from questionable sources.
  

Spices and Flavorings

It costs very little to buy the dried herbs listed in the diagram (or to grow your own fresh herbs), and it adds a lot to the taste of your food. Switching to healthy spices is simple when cooking at home, but it's very difficult to know what spices you're getting when you eat at restaurants.

Spice and Flavoring Hints

• Ginger tea is a great way to stave off morning sickness and improve digestion.
  
• Cilantro is inexpensive and does a great job of helping digestion and binding toxins like mercury. We usually give cilantro a quick wash, chop, and add a little into our salads.