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When I was pregnant with Reuben I was pretty religious about taking supplements. With Edith’s pregnancy I had an iron deficiency so I was eating a tonne of kale and religiously taking my prescribed iron supplements like no one’s business. I went to the baby shows, I read up on the latest way to get my nutrients… I didn’t have a particularly good diet so that wasn’t the best thing (other than with Toby where my craving was vegetables and fruit slices) but I also didn’t have the worst diet going. Even though I was determined to try and make my body healthy for the most part, with 2 toddlers in tow, I felt the rush and I often turned to sweets or chocolate bars when I was pregnant with Edith. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it did lead to me now struggling to get out of the habit and back into healthy eating, and struggling to change my cravings for sugary stuff.
With this being said, when I was approached by nutrimum and asked if I would like to try out their pregnancy bars to share my thoughts with my pregnant readers, my first thought was… erm, I know I gained a tonne of weight lately but I’m not pregnant, do I look pregnant on Instagram?! Closely followed by, actually, I wish someone had told me about a handy snack bar that I could shove in my purse to nibble on instead of heading over to McDonalds for a “snack wrap” twice a day. So I said yes.
Again, just to reiterate, this is not an announcement, I do not have a bun in the oven (well, unless you count the slab of birthday cake I ate over the weekend as a bun? That is 100% still in my metaphorical oven) but I do have a lot of pregnant readers, followers and friends. So why turn down the chance to tell you guys about something that would have helped me?
Nutrimum bars contain 400μg Folic Acid – the daily amount recommended by the Department of Health during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Vitamin D contributes to the maintenance of normal bones. To be used as part of a varied, balanced diet, which means that you don’t have to remember to take little tablets whilst you’re rushing around in the morning or completely exhausted from, oh I don’t know, growing a human. The Department of Health recommend that we take folic acid before conception so that the body is “ready” for a pregnancy. I know I broke the folic acid out when we were trying for Toby – and I was already taking it when I fell pregnant with Edith because she was my post miscarriage baby.
So apart from the fact that eating a fortified cereal bar is a great way to support busy mums and mums to be, the tasty nutrimum bars contain the daily recommended dose of folic acid and vitamin D, as well as vitamins B2 & B6 which contribute to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue. But were they palatable? For me, yes and no.
I was not a fan of the chocolate and raisin nutrimum bars, they just weren’t to my taste however I’ve never really been a fan of raisins and I felt that the flavour was quite strong with quite a heavy undertone of seeds. If you’re the type of person that eats trail mix I would be surprised if you didn’t love it. For me, the nutrimum summer fruits bars were delicious. I love oats, I love juicy cranberries and it had just the right amount of sweetness to keep my sweet tooth happy without leaving me feeling queasy. I could eat these by the bucket full, although you should only eat 1 a day.
Nutrimum also make breastfeeding bars which is still applicable to me at this stage with Edith still feeding at 2.5 years old. I haven’t tried those bars so I can’t comment on them, but if they are anything like the pregnancy bars I would say they were a much better snack than a packet of crisps or bar of chocolate.
You can find nutrimum pregnancy and breastfeeding bars at selected boots stores nationwide and online at ocado, for more information you can visit www.boots.com/nutrimum.
