When pregnant, you want sweets: reasons, how much you can, what you can’t

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Often during the period of bearing a child, a woman's taste preferences change. Someone tends towards s alty, someone wants sweets during pregnancy, other expectant mothers have a desire to consume specific foods. What are the reasons for all these changes? Why do you crave sweets during pregnancy?

Scientific justification

For what reason can a woman's taste preferences change? Most often, during pregnancy, you want sweets if there is a lack of important vitamins and minerals, especially calcium. The body is trying to make up for their lack of glucose, which is contained in sweet foods.

In addition, sweet foods, especially chocolate, promote the release of the happy hormone endorphin. The expectant mother really needs positive emotions during childbearing, as this has a positive effect on the formation of the nervous system.

Also, cravings for sweets can be due to malnutrition and the woman's habit of eating harmful foods such as chips,crackers, carbonated drinks. In addition, the desire to eat sweets may be due to a lack of carbohydrates. In this case, these products play the role of quickly saturating the body.

What to replace?

During pregnancy, you crave sweets quite often, but a large amount of such foods in your daily diet can harm the he alth of mother and child. What can replace them? First you need to understand the reason for the strong cravings for harmful products. If it is caused by a lack of vitamins and minerals, then you need to diversify your diet as much as possible. It must include fresh vegetables, fruits, greens, complex carbohydrates such as corn, millet, buckwheat, oatmeal, black bread.

Excellent alternatives to sweets are products such as dried fruits - prunes, dried apricots, figs, dates.

They have enough sugar to satisfy the craving for sweets, but in the meantime they bring much more benefits to the body. Instead of sugar, you can use bee honey if there is no allergic reaction to it, and replace milk chocolate with bitter.

Dietitian Tips

If you really want sweets during pregnancy, then you can reduce this craving by listening to the advice of nutritionists:

1. Breakfast should be full and consist of cereals with the addition of dried fruits or fresh fruits, cottage cheese, and freshly squeezed juice. Breakfast should not be neglected, as it is one of the most important receptions.food.



2. Eat often - 5-6 times a day, in small portions. Thus, hunger will not be felt, and the desire to have a sweet snack will come to naught.
3. Serving sizes should be such that you get up from the table with a feeling of slight hunger. It is important not to overeat.
4. No need to seize a bad mood with sweets, it can be replaced by watching positive films, listening to music, doing your favorite hobby or taking a walk in the fresh air.

It is also not recommended to blame yourself if you still eat an extra piece of sweet, as this can worsen mood and lower self-esteem.

Harm from sweets

Experienced experts are not in vain advised to limit the amount of sweets consumed not only during pregnancy, but also before and after it. Such products contain a large amount of fast carbohydrates that saturate the body for a fairly short period of time. In addition, a large amount of sweets in the diet can threaten such troubles:

1. Great weight gain.
2. Lack of calcium in the body due to the replacement of sweet foods with full meals. This causes tooth decay, hair loss and skin deterioration.
3. Some diseases of the pancreas or liver may develop.
4. Complications in childbirth caused by being overweight.
5. Predisposition to allergic reactions in a child.

In addition, the use of sweets in large quantities can provokedevelopment of diabetes if there is a genetic predisposition.

What to give up?

Why do you crave sweets during pregnancy? The reasons are hidden in the lack of positive emotions or essential trace elements. It is quite difficult to completely refrain from eating sweets, but there are foods that are recommended to be abandoned for the entire period of bearing a child:

1. Factory-made cakes that contain a large amount of fatty margarine. It is advisable to replace such products with cakes of our own production, because in this way you can control the quality of the ingredients.
2. Chocolates should be excluded due to the high content of confectionery fat, flavor enhancers, flavors.



3. Filled biscuits are also on the list of deprecated foods.

You should also refrain from eating marmalade, which includes artificial coloring, carbonated drinks. Sweets that contain sweeteners should be avoided, as their effect on the fetus is not yet fully understood.

Folk omens

Pregnancy is a state of a woman, which since ancient times has been shrouded in many beliefs and signs. Who will be born if you want sweets during pregnancy? A particularly large number of signs are associated with the taste preferences of the expectant mother. Even now, in the age of modern technology and ultrasound diagnostics, with which you can determine the sex in early pregnancychild, many mothers tend to trust omens.

Thus, there is a belief that if, while waiting for a baby, a woman is prone to eating a lot of meat, fatty and s alty foods, and there is also a craving for alcoholic beverages, then a boy will be born. If there is a craving for sweets, then a girl will be born.

These folk omens coincide only in a small percentage of cases, so you should not rely on your own gastronomic preferences. In the matter of gender determination, it is better to trust qualified specialists.

There is also a belief that the products used can shape the sex of the child. This is a fairly common myth. It has no connection with reality, since the sex of the unborn baby is formed regardless of the products used.

Good points

If you want sweets during pregnancy, then you cannot deny yourself this desire. This is due to the fact that sweet foods give a feeling of happiness and joy, and their complete exclusion from the diet of a sweet tooth can somewhat overshadow pregnancy. If you have a strong desire for sweets, you can replace traditional store-bought sweets with natural curd desserts, yogurt, homemade ice cream, as well as homemade marshmallows, meringues or marshmallows.

Conclusion

If you want sweets during pregnancy, then this is a completely normal desire. In order not to harm your body, you need to carefully monitor the quantity and qualityconsumed products, and replace the most harmful of them with natural sweets. New gastronomic desires for a pregnant woman are just a lack of some trace elements. You can replenish them if you balance your diet and include in it a large number of he althy foods such as fish, lean meat, fresh vegetables, fruits and cereals.