When Jennifer Power was pregnant with her first child, she forced herself to eat fish. She doesn?t really like the food, but she thought it would be good for her baby. ?My OB/GYN encouraged me to eat fish for the omega-3 fats,? she says. But Power also worried about the risk of mercury, and wondered how to balance the health benefits with the real risk of mercury consumption.
It turns out Power was right to focus on fish. In July 2019, the US Food & Drug Administration released new guidelines that recommend pregnant women consume eight to 12 ounces of low mercury fish per week to get essential nutrients for pregnancy, particularly the omega-3 fat called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). This is more than what?s recommended in Health Canada?s 2007 guidelines, which recommend five ounces of low-mercury fish each week. Benefits of fish during pregnancy

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What to eat while pregnant: Food guide and cheat sheet
Bruce Holub, professor emeritus in the department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Guelph, says that recent studies indicate that pregnant women may benefit from more DHA than previously thought, so the Health Canada guidelines may be outdated. “Two major international clinical trials found that supplementation ...