Guilt-Free Indulgences

No, you don’t need to lead the life of a saint while creating another human being. Here are foods you can gorge on, sans any worry.

- Neelanjana Singh

I AM OFTEN asked if there are foods that can be taken freely without any sense of guilt or alarm when one is expecting a baby. Yes, there are some, for sure. But I will start with an introduction to the nutrients your body needs the most during pregnancy before delving into the foods they come from.

As we all know, the calorie requirement of the body goes up during the gestational period. These additional calories should come from food sources such as wholegrain cereals, healthy fats and fruits. Pregnancy demands an additional 23g of protein in the daily diet. But what matters more is the quality and not the quantity. Dairy, egg, soy and meats are proteins of good quality. Another nutrient that the body demands more during this phase is iron—an additional 14mg per day. Likewise, for calcium, the requirement goes up by 600mg for an expecting mother while the figure for vitamin C is 20mg extra per day.

Going by these additional requirements, many food items can easily be made a part of the menu. For instance, the entire range of dals, soy, nuts, and green leafy vegetables are good sources of iron. So why not go for a methi/bathua paratha with masala chole and kesar lassi for a meal instead of the regular dal, roti and saag?

Here are 10 dishes, both sweet and savoury, that will pamper your taste buds while meeting the additional nutritional demands of energy, protein, fat, iron, calcium, vitamins C and A, of your body.

sweet sins

amaranth laddu

Amaranth or