Nutritional value of daily food rations of overweight and normal weight pregnant women.

Background: Adequate nutrition and nutritional status during pregnancy are essential for mother’s health and foetus development. Due to increased demands, pregnant women are vulnerable to inadequate nutritional status and paradoxically it may also affect overweight women

Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate energy and nutrients intake in the group of pregnant women in relation to nutritional standards and pre-pregnancy BMI

Material And Methods: The study included 90 women, during the third trimester of pregnancy, recruited from Warsaw antenatal classes. The anthropometric data gathered in the research were used to calculate BMI value before pregnancy. Pre-pregnancy BMI was categorised as: normal weight (BMI=18.5-24.9 kg/m2, n=47) and overweight (BMI ≥25.0 kg/m2, n=43). The assessment of women’s nutrition was based on 3-days dietary record. Due to heterogeneous variances, differences between groups were assessed using Mann Whitney U test, p<0.05 was considered as significant

Results: The mean intake of energy, protein, fat and carbohydrates in the overweight women were significantly higher than in healthy weight women (p<0.05). Most of the healthy weight women did not reach EAR standard for vitamin D (79.5%), whereas in overweight group it was 41.3%

Conclusions: Despite the fact that intakes of energy and all nutrients were higher in overweight women than in normal weight ones, we observed that women in both groups had risk of insufficient supply of energy, iodine, potassium and vitamin D. For this reason, accurate nutritional assessment should be an integral part of obstetric care