Healthy Baby: Choline During Pregnancy… Why Do You Need It?

Healthy Baby: Choline During Pregnancy… Why Do You Need It?

Feeding Your Fetus
As expecting mothers we want to do anything we can to benefit the health of our baby. Our bodies often tell us what we need through the cravings and aversions that we experience. Many of us take a prenatal vitamin and assume that this is enough to support our baby’s health. Prenatal vitamins have a lot of great benefits, but there are foods that you can include in your pregnancy diet that can really benefit your baby.

Children’s attention span
In today’s world we are striving to learn more about improving our children’s attention span. Quick moving technology and instant gratification plays a huge role in our children’s overall ability to focus. If we can do something to increase our baby’s attention span while our child is developing in the womb, why wouldn’t we? Choline is an essential nutrient that plays a significant role in early brain development (it is a precursor to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is responsible for brain and nervous system functions like memory, mood, muscle control & more).

Food For Pregnancy
Including choline in your diet during pregnancy gives your little one so many health benefits including their brain and spinal cord development, attention span, working memory, and problem solving ability. It is recommended that pregnant women consume around 450mg of choline per day. Foods high in choline include:

  • 1 (whole) egg= 150mg
  • chicken or beef liver= 240mg
  • fish= 187mg
  • shiitake mushrooms= 116mg
  • soybeans= 214mg
  • beef= 115mg

For more information, check out our Comprehensive Birth Course!

Study: https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.202101217R