Parentpedia

What Experts Say

What Experts Say

Ask any health care practitioner and chances are you'll be told that it is a good idea to take a prenatal vitamin. Optimally, you will start taking that vitamin daily before you get pregnant, to ensure that your body has enough folic acid, iron, calcium, and other vital nutrients at your baby's conception. Not any multivitamin will do: prenatal vitamins are tabulated to respond to a pregnant body's needs. For pregnant women who find that prenatal supplements increase their nausea or constipation, the standard recommendation is to keep taking them but to try a different brand.

Despite the virtually universal nature of this recommendation, scientific studies have not shown definitively that prenatal vitamins always lead to healthier babies. The growing fetus will take the nutrients it needs from the mother's body, which is why even a malnourished woman can give birth to a healthy baby.

There is a small but growing faction of experts who are rethinking recommendations about multivitamins in general. According to Michael Pollan, an internationally recognized expert and author of "In Defense of Food", nutrients in supplements lose much of their nutritional value to the human body once they are isolated from the whole foods in which they are naturally found. Pollan argues what was common sense to our great great grandmothers: that humans need to eat food, and that eating whole foods is always healthier than taking supplements.