Herbal Cuisine in Early Pregnancy Helps Balance Nutrition
The early pregnancy stage is when organs form—avoid taking tonics.
During mid-pregnancy, expectant mothers tend to experience heatiness and irritability. They can eat nourishing blood, clearing heat, and cooling tonics such as chrysanthemum tea, fresh fruit juices, and foods rich in iron and calcium. Occasionally, nourishing fetal dishes can be consumed, but specific formulas vary by individual constitution (do not follow unverified folk remedies or self-medicate).
For physically weak expectant mothers, summer fruits that are not overly cooling—such as durian, cherries, starfruit, avocado, and papaya—are acceptable. However, cooling foods like watermelon, cantaloupe, pear, and bamboo shoots should only be eaten during midday in summer, not at night, to avoid diarrhea or excessive phlegm and coughing. Avoid overindulging in ice cream or cooling foods to prevent passing on a cold constitution to the fetus.
Foods by Nature:
Warm and Hot Foods:
Spicy items: chili peppers, garlic, satay sauce, ginger, scallions.
Hot and drying foods: any smoked, fried, grilled items, leeks, fennel, cinnamon, lamb, dog meat.
Hot fruits: longan, lychee, durian, mango. Stimulating foods: coffee, curry, alcohol, pickled products.
Cooling Foods: ice cream, watermelon, pear, pomelo, grapefruit, coconut, orange, persimmon.
Slightly Cooling Foods: melons (watermelon, muskmelon, bitter melon, loofah, winter melon, cucumber), sugarcane, Chinese cabbage, lotus root, watercress, white radish, mung beans.
Mild, sweet, neutral, easily digestible foods: guava, apple, grapes, orange, papaya, strawberries, cherries, mulberries, hollow stem vegetable, spinach, carrot, chrysanthemum greens, broccoli. Some traditional Chinese herbs can cause miscarriage or harm mother and child and should be avoided or used cautiously.
Generally fall into the following categories:
Toxic herbs: aconite, processed aconite, caudatum aconite, wild kudzu, sheep’s foot, pinellia, great-eared euphorbia, daphne, constant mountain, pinellia.
Blood-breaking herbs: peach kernel, achyranthes root, dried lacquer, madder root, tree peony bark, tripterygium, spikenard, safflower, logwood.
Vomiting and laxative herbs: colchicum, croton seed, black bindweed, soap pod, winter melon seed, coix seed.
Strongly warming and drying herbs: magnolia bark, cinnamon, dried ginger.
These herbs require strict caution: some must be absolutely avoided (especially toxic and blood-breaking herbs); others can be used after processing (e.g., pinellia, magnolia bark). Use judgment based on specific circumstances.
Modern experiments prove coix seed oil stimulates the uterus in animals, rapidly promoting uterine contractions. Therefore, pregnant women should avoid consuming coix seed.