Karen Gurwitz - The Well-Rounded Pregnancy Cookbook: Give Your Baby a Healthy Start with 100 Recipes That Adapt to Fit How You Feel

When Karen asked me to write the foreword to this book, she presumably was thinking of me as a nutrition expert. But when I accepted, I was thinking of myself as a husband and a dad. My wife, Catherine, and I have five children. Pregnancy has been a big part of our lives, and as for us all, wonderful, challenging, episodically tormenting, and of course, life changing.

In preventive medicine, we refer to the occasional opportunities we have to influence people in a way that will nurture their health as teachable moments. Unfortunately, all too often, the teachable moment comes later than it shouldfor example, right after a heart attack. All of a sudden, someone who could have avoided heart disease in the first place is born again with a zeal for healthy living. My colleagues and I are happy to do all we can with these opportunities, so we at least help that person avoid even more health trouble down the line. But these after-the-fact opportunities to pursue health dont make us nearly as happy as we would be to see health nurtured as a cherished priority from birth!

And thats where Karen comes in. She knows that pregnancy is the greatest of all teachable momentsan opportunity, an invitation, and perhaps even an obligation, to indulge in the pursuit of your own health, while building the foundation of lifelong health for your baby. There could scarcely be a more important investment, nor a greater potential return. And as you confront the unique challenges and rich promise of pregnancy, you could not hope for a better investment counselor than Karen.

For starters, she is a wise, thoughtful, intelligent, caring, and sensitive person. We could all do with occasional advice from someone with those credentials! But of course, she is so much more. Karen is a mother of three and thus has the intimate understanding of all the challenges of pregnancy that can only come from firsthand experience.

After the birth of her third child, she found herself balancing taking care of two toddlers, a newborn, and her fledgling business while not losing sight of her own needs and desires. While for many of us that might have been a daunting set of tasks, for Karen it was, to borrow from my friends at O magazine, an aha moment. Karen has found the way to nurture herself and her family, and to help you do the same, not along the unrealistic path of least resistance, but by navigating around the challenges of the real world, just like the rest of us.

The dietary guidance Karen offers here is as practical as it is prudent. Karen commits herself to high standards of healthful nutrition, while avoiding the danger of making perfect the enemy of good. You not only should do as she advisesyou truly can!

As for the culinary merits of Karens guidance, they are scarcely in question. Before this book was ever a twinkle in a publishers eye, Karen was successfully running her wonderfully innovative catering company, Mothers & Menus. This lady not only knows how to nurture health and pregnancy as they deserveshe really knows how to cook!

I love that this book is about healthful nutrition, but not only that. Its about caring for yourself, your baby, and your family in a wholesome, holistic way. Its about finding pleasure in the pursuit of health, and health in the pursuit of pleasure. Its about you, and also about your connections to the people who surround you. And, of course, its about a vital, healthful, joyful start in life for your baby.

Pregnancy is an indelible passage, a defining time in the lives of all those touched by it. Karen will guide you through that passage toward both greater joy and better health, for you and your baby. That is an undeniably well-rounded destination, and this book offers a well-blazed trail right to it. I encourage you to follow it.

David L. Katz, M.D.
Director, Yale Prevention Research Center
Associate Director, Nutrition Science,
Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, Yale University
Associate Professor, Adjunct, Public Health,
Yale University School of Medicine
Medical Contributor, ABC News
Nutrition Columnist, O, the Oprah Magazine
www.davidkatzmd.com