Can Pregnant Women Eat Watermelon? These Precautions You Need to Know
When summer arrives, watermelon is one of people's favorite treats for beating the heat, and many moms-to-be love eating it too. So can pregnant women eat watermelon? Of course pregnant women can eat watermelon. Watermelon is over 94% water and is also extremely rich in glucose, vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D and more, giving it high nutritional value. Eating watermelon during pregnancy can not only quench thirst, clear heat and relieve summer heat, and promote bowel movements and urination, but can also help treat summer heatstroke, head distension and chest tightness, thirst and dry throat, scanty dark urine, sore throat, mouth ulcers and other conditions.
Pictured: watermelon
The benefits of pregnant women eating watermelon:
Eating some watermelon during pregnancy not only replenishes the body's nutritional consumption, but also helps better meet the nutritional intake needs of the fetus.
Eating some watermelon in early pregnancy can quench thirst, cut greasiness and relieve restlessness, and also has a fairly good effect on stopping vomiting.
In late pregnancy, women often experience varying degrees of edema and elevated blood pressure. Regularly eating watermelon can not only promote urination and reduce swelling, but also has the effect of lowering blood pressure, which is also beneficial to the health of pregnant women.
Watermelon can also increase milk secretion, so it is beneficial for pregnant women to eat some watermelon.
However, it should be noted that watermelon is cold in nature, and eating too much can easily harm the spleen and stomach, and overeating can cause abdominal distension, diarrhea, loss of appetite and other problems, so pregnant women should eat watermelon in moderation. In addition, do not eat iced watermelon. Iced watermelon just taken out of the refrigerator is at too low a temperature, and eating it can easily trigger uterine contractions in pregnant women and increase the risk of miscarriage.
Precautions for pregnant women eating watermelon. Watermelon is cool in nature and high in sugar, so there are many precautions when pregnant women eat watermelon:
1. Pregnant women should eat watermelon in moderation
Although watermelon has many advantages, it is not something anyone can eat, and certainly not without limit. Watermelon is cool in nature, and eating too much can easily cause abdominal distension, diarrhea and other problems. Watermelon is also high in sugar, so eating too much watermelon means taking in excessive sugar. Because women's endocrine system undergoes physiological changes during pregnancy, the body has a relative insufficiency of insulin and a reduced ability to stabilize blood sugar, causing high sugar concentration in the blood and leading to gestational diabetes, and gestational diabetes is an important cause of miscarriage and premature birth in pregnant women. Therefore, pregnant women should not eat watermelon in excess.
2. Pregnant women should not eat watermelon before or after meals
The large amount of water in watermelon will dilute gastric juice, and eating it before or after meals will affect the digestion and absorption of food. Moreover, eating a large amount of watermelon before a meal will take up stomach capacity, greatly reducing the intake of various nutrients during the meal.
3. Pregnant women should not eat "iced watermelon"
To avoid causing gastrointestinal problems, when eating watermelon you should also choose fresh, fully ripe watermelon, and especially do not eat watermelon chilled in the refrigerator. If it is iced watermelon at too low a temperature, pregnant women may experience uterine contractions after eating it, and in severe cases it may cause premature birth or even endanger the life of the fetus. In addition, watermelon that has been cut and then refrigerated easily breeds bacteria, and pregnant women who eat it easily develop gastrointestinal problems. It is recommended that pregnant women eat fresh watermelon just cut at room temperature.