Poster Presentation Women's Health Forum 2021

Vegetable intake in pregnancy: A scoping review (#62)

Kira Simmons 1 , Nina Meloncelli 2 , Lauren Kearney 1 , Judith Maher 1
  1. University of the Sunshine Coast, Nambour, QLD, Australia
  2. Queensland Health, QLD, Australia

Vegetables as low energy nutrient dense foods are important in pregnancy however intakes of vegetables appear low in pregnant populations. There is a lack of synthesised data available on vegetable consumption patterns in pregnancy, intake over time, and variation to vegetable consumption according to maternal socio-demographic characteristics. Understanding what is known about vegetable intake in pregnancy is important. The aim of this scoping review was 1) to identify vegetable intakes in pregnancy and compare, where able, to recommended levels; and 2) to explore the relationship between vegetable intake during pregnancy in energy replete contexts and maternal socio-demographic characteristics. This review was undertaken following the 5-stage approach for scoping reviews by Arksey and O’Malley integrated with the recent Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. All studies set in energy replete contexts that assessed the vegetable intake of pregnant women were included for evaluation. Forty-six publications were included, based on 45 separate data sets. While vegetable intake of pregnant women varied across populations, it fell well below recommendations worldwide. Clear positive relationships exist between older age, higher education, higher income and vegetable intake in pregnancy. Additionally, those studies that determined there to be a relationship between BMI and vegetable intake, found vegetable intake to be lower in obese women. For many other variables, findings were either inconclusive or the available evidence too limited to generalise findings. Overall exploration into maternal factors and vegetable intake is piecemeal. The challenge of inconsistencies in tools for assessing vegetable intake in pregnancy needs to be addressed and defining vegetables remains an ongoing issue. As vegetable intake is low worldwide, effective strategies to support vegetable intake in pregnancy in general and in those populations that are likely to have lowest vegetable intake are needed.