EATING FOR TWO? A new take on 'baby food'

Ready to do the right thing nutritionally? Maybe this cookbook can help.
By JUDITH WEINRAUB
WASHINGTON POST
Pregnancy is rarely thought of as a great time for enjoying food. What about morning sickness? Irrational cravings? For that matter, those extra pounds? And what about having to feed the rest of your family?
Catherine Jones and Rose Ann Hudson, a professionally trained chef and a nutritionist, believe it's possible to cook appealing meals, satisfy a pregnant woman's nutritional requirements, please the rest of the family and do it without being stuck in the kitchen all day. To prove it, they've written "Eating for Pregnancy: An Essential Guide to Nutrition With Recipes for the Whole Family" (Marlowe & amp; Co., 2003).
Jones and Hudson and their families live in Montgomery County, Md. Jones is the one with culinary expertise. A graduate of Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in France, she worked on two cookbooks before this one: chef Jean Louis Palladin's "Cooking With the Seasons" (Lickle Publishing Inc., 1989) where she helped him turn restaurant kitchen shorthand into recipes for the home cook, and her own "A Year of Russian Feasts" (Jellyroll Press, 2002).
She'd been thinking about writing a cookbook for pregnant women when she became pregnant with her first child and developed pregnancy-induced high blood pressure and preeclampsia, a complication of some pregnancies. "I realized I could really use a book like this one, [with] nutritional information at a glance and recipes and ideas to meet the goals," she says.
But work on the book was delayed by both her daughter's premature birth and two-month hospital stay and her husband's career as a foreign service officer, which took the family to Macedonia for two years. Back home, after the couple's second child was born, Jones resumed work on the book and sought out a nutritionist as a writing partner. "I was looking for someone who could give me all the medical and nutritional information I needed to write the book and develop the recipes," she says.
The other partner
She found Hudson, a perinatal nutritionist on the staff of Inova Fairfax (Va.) Hospital and in private practice. Hudson came to the project with years of experience listening to the questions pregnant women ask about food -- queries like "How do I know what to eat without gaining too much weight?" or "What do I do if I have to eat out?"
"Pregnant women are highly motivated," says Hudson. "You'll never find a better group for lifestyle changes. But they're a little confused and sometimes very insecure because everybody wants to do the right thing. They want to know how to manage if life isn't perfect. The information in the book gives them control in a situation where you don't really have a lot of control."
Their guiding principle in developing recipes for the book was making them rich in the nutrients pregnant women need -- calcium, iron, protein and fiber -- and low in fat, sodium and sugar. "Rose Ann gave me lists of the healthiest foods for pregnant women," says Jones, "I created recipes around those foods and tested them on my family and friends."
The book emphasizes a whole family approach -- recipes have to fit into today's fast-paced lives and be manageable for first-time mothers as well as for women feeding existing families. "My second pregnancy convinced me that this book needed to be family-friendly," says Jones. "Having to feed a toddler and take care of my pregnant self was a challenge."
Jones gave the recipes to other mothers to test. If it didn't make the quick-and-easy, family-friendly grade, it was tossed.
Hudson realized that information on the food pregnant women should eat was only part of the advice she gave out in her practice that might also be useful to readers. "I thought it was important to stress good nutrition in pregnancy, at the same time offering meal planning and cooking strategies for all pregnant women," says Hudson. "Working women, women with small children and high-risk pregnant women."
Lots of choices
The more than 150 recipes in the book are presented in categories that fit with contemporary lifestyles. In addition to main courses and sweets, there's a soup and sandwiches section, a vegetarian section, a section devoted to salads and dips. There is also a breakfast section with pancakes and waffles no normal kid would complain about and lots of recipes for foods straight out of a takeout menu: noodles with spinach, red peppers and sesame dressing; artichoke-spinach dip; pad thai; chicken or beef fajitas. All of these come equipped with explanations appropriate to the nutritional needs of the mother and child-to-be, as well as nutritional information for the rest of the family.
The basics involved in planning a healthful diet are in the book, too, as are discussions of the extra 300 calories that pregnant women need, the 1,200 milligrams of calcium they should consume daily, the amount of protein that should be included in their diet (about double what they'd normally need) and guidelines on carbohydrates and fats. There are sections on vitamins and minerals and on high-risk pregnancies, teen-age pregnancies, multiple pregnancies, diabetes, anemia and, of course, suggestions on dealing with morning sickness. And there are cautions about prominent food bacteria -- salmonella and E. coli.
As a result, looking at the book is something like reading a baby-care manual before you have a baby -- a little scary to read out of context but actually fairly simple and straightforward in practice.
All the latest
"It's hard to provide a balance between providing all the information and scaring people," says Jones, whose experience with two high-risk pregnancies prompted her to want to include the medical and technical sections. "I think women want information. Some simply want to know how much weight they should gain and if they can still have their morning coffee, while others want the latest on mercury levels and safe fish consumption, or listeriosis culprits."
"Our obligation is to put all the latest research out there," says Hudson. "Here it is. You have the right to take this as you want to. But if you're trying to have the ideal pregnancy outcome, you can't make good decisions until you have all the information."
Because the recipes in "Eating for Pregnancy" were conceived to fit real-life situations, the book is a telling record of our time, when busy families rely on slow cookers, shortcuts and prepared foods. The authors also apparently think that in today's world adults occasionally need reminding that children eat better if their parents eat with them, as well as tips on how to construct a complete meal. Not that any of their text is meant as criticism -- it's a realistic approach at a time when more and more meal times take place outside the home.
And what advice do Jones and Hudson offer a pregnant woman who's too nauseated to cook? "Wait until you can," says Hudson. "In the meantime, get someone else to prepare meals for you."