Lorena Novak Bull - The Vegan Pregnancy Cookbook: Over 200 Recipes to Keep You and Baby Happy and Healthy for All Three Trimesters (and Beyond)!

When youre a vegan, there are no specific requirements as to how much (or how little) cooking you will need to do.

Some vegans love to prepare meals and create new recipes. Others rely on takeout, convenience foods, and quick-to-fix meals. But no matter how much cooking you decide to take on, during your pregnancy you need to make sure that youre eating the correct amounts of certain nutrients every day to ensure that your baby is developing in an appropriate manner. Fortunately, the key to a nutritionally sound vegan diet is actually quite simple. Eating a variety of foods including fruits, vegetables, plenty of leafy greens, whole-grain products, beans, nuts, and seeds in sufficient quantities virtually ensures that youll meet most of your nutrient needs, such as vitamins A and C. For the few remaining nutrient needs that can be a bit trickier to meet with a vegan diet, you will need to approach meal planning with a little extra care to make sure that appropriate foods are included to satisfy those needs.

Read on to see what you need to be eating during your pregnancy.

Folic acid (folate) significantly lowers your babys risk of developing neural tube defects (birth defects of the brain and spinal cord, such as spina bifida and anencephaly). Because the neural tube forms during the first four weeks of pregnancy, before many women even realize they are pregnant, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that all women of childbearing age do one of the following:

• Take a vitamin that has folic acid in it every day. This can either be a folic acid supplement or a multivitamin. Most multivitamins sold in the United States have 400 micrograms of folic acid, the amount nonpregnant women need each day.

  Check the label of the vitamin to make sure that it contains 100 percent of the daily value (DV) of folic acid.

• Eat a bowl of breakfast cereal that has 100 percent of the DV of folic acid every day. Check the label on the side of the cereal box for one that has 100 percent next to folic acid.

Use of a vitamin or a breakfast cereal containing 100 percent of the DV for folic acid are both reliable ways to ensure adequate folic acid intake before pregnancy. During the first three months of pregnancy, 400 micrograms of folic acid per day is still adequate; however, you should trade your multivitamin for prenatal vitamins, which provide higher amounts of certain nutrients that are critical in your babys development. The requirement for folic acid during months 4 through 9 increases to 600 micrograms per day. Check the amount of folic acid in your prenatal vitamin so you will know how much you need to get from the foods that you eat each day. Folic acid is added to breads, cereal, pasta, rice, and flour and is found naturally in leafy dark-green vegetables, citrus fruits and juices, and beans.

You may only need small amounts of folic acid, but dont forget its an essential vitamin. Because the amounts in foods vary and it may be hard to get all of the folic acid you need from food sources alone, be sure to take your prenatal vitamins as recommended by your physician.

Since vegans must get vitamin B12 from fortified foods or supplements, its important to make sure that you are choosing foods or a vitamin pill that provides this essential nutrient. Vitamin B12 plays an important role in the development of the babys brain and nervous system. Be aware that some foods once thought to naturally contain vitamin B12, such as sea vegetables and fermented foods, often contain unreliable or unusable forms of this vitamin called, B12 analogues., Instead, select foods that have been fortified with vitamin B12. Foods that may be fortified with vitamin B12 include:

• Soymilk, rice milk, and other commercial plant milks
• Meat analogues (veggie meats)
• Breakfast cereals
• Energy bars and protein bars
• Marmite yeast extract
• Tofu
• Nutritional yeast

Before you are pregnant, you need 2.4 micrograms of vitamin B12 daily; once youre pregnant, the daily reference intake (DRI) increases to 2.6 micrograms.

A food or supplement that contains at least 45 percent of the DV for vitamin B12 will provide enough to meet these needs. One easy way to make sure youre getting enough of this vitamin is to take a daily multivitamin that provides at least 45 percent of the DV for vitamin B12.

Proteins are responsible for everything from the structure of your muscles and bones to the proper function of your immune system to food digestion. In pregnancy, extra protein is needed to support your babys growthbuilding bones and muscles, for example. You also need extra protein as your blood volume increases and your breasts and uterus enlarge. Before you were pregnant, you needed around 0.4 grams of protein for every pound that you weighed.