New York Post

Every expectant mother in America is handed virtually the same nutritional gospel: take your prenatal, eat these foods, hit these numbers. What nobody mentions is that those numbers were largely set in 1941 to feed soldiers and civilians during wartime.

The Recommended Dietary Allowances were established specifically to address issues of nutrition that might “affect national defense.” Pregnant women were, to put it generously, an afterthought. A wartime oversight, perhaps. Less understandable: we never really fixed it.

Most reference values for pregnancy were determined not by studying pregnant women directly, but by modifying values for non-pregnant women — or men — using a modeling method.…