Care During Pregnancy

Eating honey during pregnancy is advisable for any expectant woman. The gut flora of children and adults over one year old have the ability of fending off the botulism spores that might be existent in honey and end up rendering them nontoxic. Considering the spores would be dead in your gastrointestinal tract, the probability of making it to your bloodstream is low, which means they can never be passed on to the baby.

The complication that honey during pregnancy might cause is that it might contain a minimal content of botulism spores. Actually, there is no remedy for removing them if they already exist because the process of pasteurization specifically gets hot enough to kill bacteria (not botulism). The honey content is so minimal that it is non-toxic to adults (they process it and their bodies get rid of it) and not children. That is the main reason why honey is not advisable for children below the age of one year. I guess the main concern for an expectant woman would be if toxins can pass via the placenta or not. In case no one knows the answer, you might prefer doing a Google search on the concern.

Consuming artificial honey during pregnancy and other artificial sweeteners like the ones present in soda is not harmful for the public as a whole. No research has valid proof that it is unsafe for human beings to take a lot of artificial sweeteners when they are pregnant. But, I suggest that it’s better to eat raw honey for safety reason. The danger is apparently at its lowest point with aspartame, while rodent research studies and results show that Saccharin cause cancer and birth complications. To get an alternative for the consumption of artificial sweeteners during pregnancy, try taking water, fruit juice and milk.

Temporarily, it might be important if you try a different sweetener. I always use some small amounts of Stevia in tea every time I run out of honey. It might be useful if you try sucanat or brown rice syrup, maple syrup or agave syrup.

Children who are below one year should avoid eating honey because there is a possibility that it contains botulinum spores. In comparison to a young child’s digestive system, the mature digestive systems are more acidic and due to that, they hamper the production of toxins that cause the poisonous food poisoning botulism. Children below one year of age lack mature digestive systems that prevents the occurrence of all these. Whenever youngsters eat honey that has been contaminated with botulinum spores, these spores might just colonize the intestine. Though the spores are non-toxic, as soon as they germinate, they release lethal neurotoxins that are absorbed to the blood stream, causing paralysis.

An expectant woman can eat honey safely. The digestive tracts of an expectant woman are usually acidic and will therefore hamper the germination of spores. In turn, this prevents any fetal danger that involves honey consumption. Older children, men and women get regular exposure to spores present in honey without any side effect. However, women taking honey during pregnancy have fewer chances of spores growing in them.