To help reduce the obesity epidemic that attacks the United States, a panel of medical specialists is considering change the recommendations in the guides on what is the appropriate weight to gain during pregnancy.
Most pregnant women believe that they should eat for two and go from doctors' warnings about the consequences of gaining too much weight, including birth complications, premature babies and birth defects to name a few.
The ideal weight to gain is between 9 and 14 kilos depending on the physical context of each woman, but in the United States it is recommended for women with a normal body mass index that can increase between 11 and 16 kilos, to those that have a high body mass, about 7 kilos and those that have it below normal, up to 18 kilos, which seems excessive.
A study published in April showed that these figures dating from 1990 could be raising the risk of children born with overweight problems in the future. Women who followed those recommendations had four times the risk of having an overweight child at three years compared to women who had gained less weight.
Doctors point out that one in four women earns 18 kilos during pregnancy and that it is common to see women with more than 20 and even 30 kilos of more.
That is why they consider attacking one of the origins of the problem of obesity, the weight of the mother during pregnancy.
In Britain and France, weight recommendations are similar while in Japan's pregnancy guidelines it is suggested that women gain 4.5 kilos less than in the United States.
At the time, the parameters were established to ensure that small babies were not born, but currently the needs have changed and it could be a good measure to update the data. We'll see what happens.
