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When television producer, Lisa Neal, learned the wife of a work colleague was expecting a baby, she knew exactly what to buy her – a pregnancy cookbook with health-boosting nutrition tips and easy-to-follow recipes. Lisa, a passionate cook who had long been interested in using food as medicine, hit the bookstores. By the time she entered the fourth store her enthusiasm had waned. “I couldn’t find anything and I went everywhere,” she says.

Determined, Lisa returned home and began combing the internet. However, after hours of trawling through database after database, she finally admitted defeat and gave up the search. During the coming days Lisa told several of her

women friends of her disappointment and disbelief that no such cookbook existed. Everyone she spoke to listened carefully. Then they let her know that if she ever did discover such a book, they’d be very interested to read it. It didn’t take long before Lisa knew what she had to do. “It just hit me,” she explains. “I’m a cook, I love food and I’ve been giving people recipes and food remedies for years. It made sense for me to write the book myself.”

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So Lisa began delving into the complex area of diet and nutrition during pregnancy. She studied reams of research and met with dietitians, midwives and obstetricians. She spoke to her pregnant friends, and their pregnant friends and also all the mothers she knew. Soon she had

amassed a terrific amount of information. That information has since been turned into the book Feeding The Bump – Nutrition and Recipes for Pregnancy (Allen and Unwin, 2008) and Lisa couldn’t be more proud. “The book includes nutrition tips and recipes for mums-to-be and it’s already helped several of my friends have healthy, happy, comfortable pregnancies,” she says.

The importance of diet

Lisa’s book is undoubtedly great news for pregnant women who, by following her recipes, may be able to ease common pregnancy complaints such as morning sickness, fluid retention, fatigue, constipation and even heartburn, but it’s perhaps even more of a bonus for the babies these women are carrying. Recent research has shown a woman’s diet during pregnancy has a dramatic effect on her unborn child and may even contribute to a baby’s health from birth right through to their adult life.

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