Customer Reviews

What to Expect: Eating Well When You're Expecting

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Wow -- what a great book!!! I'm newly pregnant and I really want to make sure I'm eating good food for my baby, especailly since I'm so nauseous all the time. I saw this book in the bookstore and bought it... and am I glad I did. It's packed with info about nutrition during pregnancy. It's funny and it's a really easy to read book -- plus it doesn't make you feel bad if you miss a few days of eating healthy or if you eat some unhealthy food every once in a while.

The first chapter tells you why it's important to eat nutritious food. The second chapter is so great because it goes through all the pregnancy symptoms and gives advice on exactly what to do for them in terms of food. Too nauseaous to eat (my problem) -- here are some tips. What to do about the food cravings (especially when you're craving something totally unhealthy). But the best thing is that it doesn't make you feel guilty if you do crave ice cream or cake or whatever. It recognizes that sometimes the only thing I can eat is potato chips, and it doesn't make me feel like I'm hurting my baby! But it still gives you the ideal of what you should eat (there's a really funny section later on called "ideal...get real" that totally gets this point across. Plus it makes you realize you probably are eating healthy for the most aprt anyway). I love that.

The next chapter goes through weight gain and the pregnancy diet telling you what you should be eating each day. The best thing is that the book has tons of lists of different foods -- and the serving amounts -- so figuring out how much to eat is no big deal. Then there's a great chapter on being an expectant gourmet. It goes through all the different types of food that you can eat while you're pregnant. I learned so much from that chapter. Who knew there were so many different types of lettuces!

There's also stuff on what foods to avoid when you're pregnant, and how to keep your food safe. Also sections on eating while you're working with great tips on eating when you're sick, when you're traveling, and what you can eat when you're in a restuarant.

Then the best part is the recipes -- it's half the book! Totally yummy. I already made the ginger and carrot muffins (they say ginger is good for morning sickness) and the Chicken Burgers with Mango relish. The recipes are all healthy -- but so good and they totally don't taste like health food stuff-- even my husband (mr. very picky eater) thought the muffins were great. And what's great is that I was able to eat them too even with my nausea! There are so many good looking recipes, I don't know which ones to try first (I think I'm going to try the Pork Medallions with arugula and Tomatoes next).

Totally get this book if you're pregnant and want to eat healthy and eat good food. I highly recommend it and am telling all my friends to get it too! Even the non pregnant ones!

I took this book out of the library, but decided to buy it because I wanted to own the recipes. There is a great variety of recipes for all meals of the day and snacks. Most of the recipes are lower fat and sugar and higher fiber and protein versions of your favs. They don't elimate the bad things, but they do limit it and work in more whole grains and veggies then I normally do in my cooking.

As for the other reviewers comment about the grapes on page 82 - I can see how she got confused, but they actually say: "...;a slice of whole wheat bread, an ounce of cheddar cheese, and a half cup of grapes equals 200 calories." They are talking about how to get the most variety of vitamins in your snacks.

Many who buy this book may find the info rather simplistic, which it is. Eat a variety of highly nutritious foods. But, buy it for the recipes.

Excellent book to become familiar with eating habits during pregnancy. Most of the time, I eat healthy enough, but this gave me the opportunity to see what I might be missing and how it would effect the health and development of my growing child. Highly recommended, as are all of the "What to expect" books.

I recently learned I was pregnant, and wanted to make sure I was eating right for the baby so bought a few books to do some research. I'm not sure this one will get much use - I may donate it to a local library, in case someone else finds it helpful.

In my opinion, the original "What to Expect When You're Expecting" is preferable to this book, as this doesn't give a lot of new info if you know have a basic knowledge of how to eat healthy anyway. The one big exception is the recipes that are included here, and the detailed breakdown of what different food options are available to meet each specific nutritional recommendation/requirement for pregnancy. Otherwise it's mainly just basic nutritional advice.

The second issue I had with the book is that there is very little information available for vegetarians, or even for those who only eat fish/shellfish. It would have been nice if there had been more vegetarian dishes, or even vegetarian options listed for the meat recipes.

This book has good information that you can use during your pregnancy, but you can find all the exact same information online without having to buy the book. It truly is just common sense and good health guidelines. If you're sick during your pregnancy, all this info goes out the window anyway. It's nice to want to follow the guidelines, but sometimes if all you can stomach for a week is Lucky Charms and Gushers, then that's what you'll eat. Just be aware that if you are nauseous during your pregnancy, generally reading about food will make you nauseous as well. If you are clueless about what is good for your body, then this would be useful, but if you generally know good nutrition guidelines, this is nothing ground-breaking. I wouldn't buy it again- I'd save my money for something else.

I wish I would have had this during my first pregnancy. I had asked all of my health care professionals what I should eat and how I should take care of myself during that crucial time, but the standard reply was always, "Eat healthy and exercise." This book defines what eating healthy and taking care of yourself during pregnancy involves. It includes tips on weight gain, pre-pregnancy and postpartum nutrition, information on low carb and vegetarian diets as well as family-friendly recipes.

A friend who was also pregnant at the time suggested this book to me. I bought the whole set. I HATE reading this book. Alot of jargon and messy layout. As I read this book it made me feel like they didn't edit it before publishing. For anyone who is pregnant I would recommend another book called " Mayo Clinic Guide to A Healthy Pregnancy"

I flipped through some of the recipes, they aren't anything I would want to eat AT ALL. There was no pictures, nothing mouth watering or motivating about the eating right.

I really enjoyed reading the first half of the book about all the nutrition and how it affects my baby. But as I started trying to use the recipies, I found it very difficult. Rarely does any recipie call for sugar; they use fruit juice concentrate (not a whole can, just part- not enough to use for another recipie but way to much to toss)or all-fruit preserves.

Most recipies call for nutritional ingredients that you can't taste which is great. But to add pumpkin seeds to lasagna requires A) finding expensive pumpkin seeds B)spending an entire movie shelling the pumpkin seeds which creates very sore fingers and C)pureeing your tomato sauce after you add the seeds. And that is BEFORE you start making the lasagna. And it made enough lasagna for 12 and there's just me and my husband. I didn't think it was great enough to have leftovers of so we threw most of it away.

For me, morning sickness meant that anything that took more than 15 to mix was way too much effort. Then it was summer and, again, simple recipies were all I could do. All of these recipies are more effort (or the ingredients simply cost too much) for my pregnant self to handle. Simply seeing the long ingredients list made my husband refuse to even TRY cooking one of them for me.

I recommend getting this book from your library, reading the nutritional information, flip through the recipies for ideas like adding ground flax seed to other main dishes, then return it.

I bought this book for my kindle and was not happy to find there is no table of contents available for the kindle edition! Unless you have a photographic memory I suggest you purchase the paper copy of this book if being able to reference previous chapters is important to you. I found it incredibly disappointing and frustrating not to be able to refer back to important information. Now I have to go to Barnes and Nobles and pick up a paper copy so this book will actually be useful to me. This experience has turned me off to buying reference books on my kindle. I will stick with only purchasing novels on my kindle from now on... once bitten, twice shy.