Can You Be Vegan and Pregnant?
Written by Erica Wang
Edited by Emily Moran
February 9th, 2023
Edited by Emily Moran
February 9th, 2023
Research
Are vegetarian and vegan diets safe for pregnant women? Researchers in Israel conducted an online survey to collect data about omnivorous, vegetarian, and vegan mothers’ birth outcomes. With plant-based diets becoming more popular, especially in young women, it raises the question of safety and health, for both the mother and unborn child (Melina et al., 2016; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2016).
To keep terminology consistent, the researchers defined a vegan diet as consuming meat, fish, eggs, and dairy once a month or less. A vegetarian diet consisted of meat and fish once a month or less, as well as eggs and dairy more than once a month. Finally, an omnivore diet allowed for all of the foods listed above once a month or more. There were a total of 1,419 women who participated in the study; 1,052 were omnivores (74.1% of participants), 133 were vegetarians (9.4%), and 234 were vegans (16.5%). All women had given birth to one child within the last 4 years and had no pre-existing health conditions.
After collecting and analyzing the data for correlations, the researchers noticed a few trends. For the mothers, vegetarian and vegan mothers had a lower risk of excessive weight gain during pregnancy, meaning they were less likely to gain too much weight . Vegan mothers also had fewer occurrences of gestational diabetes mellitus when compared to the omnivores, but vegetarians had no significant change. This could be due to the composition of the vegan diet, mainly that it is lower in cholesterol, saturated fats, and processed meats (Smith, 2020). Additionally, the body mass index (BMI) of the vegan and vegetarian mothers pre-pregnancy was already lower than that of the omnivores, so they were less likely to gain excess weight during pregnancy. For the babies, they were more likely to be born small for their gestational age when born to vegan mothers, but not vegetarian ones. This is not surprising because low BMI, as was observed in the vegan mothers, is a risk factor for having babies small for their gestational age (Liu et al., 2016).
Although this study sheds some light on plant-based pregnancies, more research must be done on the subject. Since diets look different all across the world, there is no one-fit solution or dietary plan. Vegan women should take extra precautions to monitor their diet and nutrition intake. Some vitamins and nutrients are mainly found in meat, but it should be noted that vegan mothers that take a prenatal supplement show no difference in umbilical cord levels of B12, iron, ferritin, and hemoglobin (Avnon et al., 2020) which is important for metabolism, blood formation, nervous system function (“Roles of vitamin B,” n.d.), and normal circulatory health (Mayo Foundation, 2022). As long as mothers are intentional about their diet and receive proper prenatal care, there should be no need to give up their dietary lifestyle for the developing baby.