Often during the period of bearing a child, a woman's taste preferences change. Someone tends to be salty, 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 want sweets during pregnancy?
Scientific background
For what reason can a woman change taste preferences? 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 shortage with glucose, which is found in sweet foods.
In addition, sweet foods, especially chocolate, contribute to the release of the hormone of joy endorphin. The expectant mother is in great need of positive emotions during the bearing of the child, as this positively affects the formation of the nervous system.
Also craving for sweets can be due to poor nutrition and the woman’s habit of eating such harmful foods as chips, crackers, sodas. In addition, the desire to eat sweets may be due to a lack of carbohydrates. In this case, these products play the role of rapid saturation of the body.
How to replace?
During pregnancy, you want sweets quite often, but a large number of such foods in the daily diet can harm the health of the mother and child. How can they be replaced? First you need to understand the reason for the strong craving for harmful products. If it is due to a lack of vitamins and minerals, then you need to diversify your diet as much as possible. It must necessarily include fresh vegetables, fruits, herbs, such complex carbohydrates, such as corn, millet, buckwheat, oatmeal, brown bread.
A great alternative to sweets are products such as dried fruits - prunes, dried apricots, figs, dates.
They have enough sugar to satisfy the desire for sweets, but meanwhile they bring much more benefits to the body. Instead of sugar, bee honey can be used if there is no allergic reaction to it, and milk chocolate should be replaced with bitter one.
Nutritionist tips
If you really want sweets during pregnancy, then you can reduce this craving by listening to the advice of nutritionists:
- Breakfast should be full and consist of cereals with the addition of dried fruits or fresh fruits, cottage cheese, as well as freshly squeezed juice. You can not neglect breakfast, as this is one of the most important meals.
- You need to 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.
- Serving sizes should be such as to get up from the table with a feeling of slight hunger. It’s important not to overeat.
- You don’t need to jam a bad mood with a sweet one, it can be replaced by watching positive films, listening to music, taking a favorite hobby or a walk in the fresh air.
It is also not recommended to reproach yourself if you still eaten an extra piece of sweet, as this can worsen your mood and lower your self-esteem.
Harm from the sweet
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, which saturate the body for a fairly short period of time. In addition, a large number of sweets in the diet can threaten such troubles:
- Great weight gain.
- The lack of calcium in the body due to the replacement of sweet foods with full meals. Because of this, tooth decay, hair loss and skin deterioration occur.
- Some diseases of the pancreas or liver may develop.
- Overweight complications during childbirth.
- Predisposition to allergic reactions in a child.
In addition, the use of sweets in large quantities can provoke the development of diabetes if there is a genetic predisposition.
What to refuse?
Why do you want sweets during pregnancy? The reasons lie in the lack of positive emotions or necessary trace elements. It is quite difficult to completely refrain from eating sweets, but there are products that are recommended to be abandoned for the entire period of bearing a child:
- Factory-made cakes that contain a large amount of fat margarine. It is desirable to replace such products with cakes of our own production, because in this way you can control the quality of the ingredients.
- Chocolates should be excluded due to the high content of confectionery fat, flavor enhancers, flavorings.
- Stuffed cookies are also on the list of non-recommended products.
You also need to refrain from consuming marmalade, which includes artificial dye, carbonated drinks. You should abandon sweets that contain sweeteners, since their effect on the fetus is not yet fully understood.
Omens
Pregnancy is a woman’s condition, which since ancient times has been shrouded in many beliefs and signs. Who will be born if during pregnancy you want sweets? 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 of the baby in early pregnancy, many mothers tend to trust signs.
Thus, there is a belief that if, while waiting for a baby, a woman is inclined to eat large amounts of meat, fatty and salty foods, and there is also a craving for alcohol, then a boy will be born. If craving for sweets is observed, then a girl will be born.
These folk signs coincide only in a small percentage of cases, so you should not rely on your own gastronomic addictions. It is better to trust qualified specialists in determining sex.
There is also a belief that the products used can form the gender 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.
Positive 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 obscure the pregnancy. With a great desire for sweets, you can replace traditional store sweets with natural curd desserts, yogurt, homemade ice cream, as well as homemade marshmallows, meringues or marshmallows.
Conclusion
If during pregnancy you want sweets, then this is a completely normal desire. In order not to harm your body, you need to carefully monitor the quantity and quality of the foods used, and replace the most harmful ones with natural sweets. New gastronomic desires for a pregnant woman are just a lack of certain trace elements. You can make up for them if you balance your diet and include in it a large number of useful products such as fish, lean meat, fresh vegetables, fruits, and cereals.