Ask the Expert: Nutrition during pregnancy

- To produce, healthy, normal weight infants - To minimize health risks to the mother. - To achieve appropriate weight gain during pregnancy

First trimester will usually be more challenging for most mummies due to morning sickness.

Junk foods like fries and chips are not healthy. They provide you calories without much nutrients that your body needs. You and your baby need adequate nutrition to ensure optimal health.

The major nutrients in milk are proteins and calcium. You can have other protein sources like fish/chicken/lean meat, eggs, beans and legumes. For calcium, you can consider calcium-enriched soy milk.

You need even more calories with additional 480kcal/day on top of your daily needs during 3rd trimester. Do continue to have balanced diet with 4 food groups with slight increase in terms of food portion or have additional 1-2 snacks per day.

Mummy will need to follow a healthy balanced diet throughout the pregnancy. Include wholegrains, protein foods like fish/chicken/lean meat, eggs, beans and legumes as well as daily dose of fruits and vegetables. High protein snacks like toast with peanut butter, soybean curd, yogurt with muesli are helpful to boost protein and calories intake.

Raw foods, big fishes with higher mercury content (shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish) and alcohol

Yes, as long as you can tolerate.