A SLIMMING firm has been criticised for offering diets to pregnant women.
Two SureSlim clinics which have opened in Scotland offer an eating plan to ensure women gain no more than one or two stone during pregnancy and can drop any extra weight quickly after the birth if they "control" their eating.
Women must try t
o last five hours between meals and cut out high-calorie foods while filling up on vegetables, fruit and lean meat.
The personalised diet plans, which cost £495, include one-to-one consultations with the firm's experts, diet advice sheets with lists of approved foods, and blood tests to check for health problems.
The private firm has so far treated "hundreds" of pregnant women at its clinics south of the border and has now opened branches in Perth and Edinburgh.
But last night leading nutritionists voiced serious concerns, warning dieting during pregnancy could lead to major health problems, saying pregnancy was "not a time for slimming".
While putting on too much weight during pregnancy can lead to health problems for mother and baby, there are also fears that some women try to avoid even natural weight gain, a condition dubbed 'pregorexia', and that many pregnant women feel pressurised to regain their figures quickly after childbirth, in the same way as celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman.
The SureSlim diet, which also caters for diabetics and slimmers with special dietary requirements, is based on balancing hormone levels in the body to encourage it to burn fat.
Yesterday Daryl Taylor, chief executive of SureSlim
said: "This has good, solid medical backing. We have not reinvented the wheel. For pregnant women it's about controlling what they eat, not about losing weight. It means that during the pregnancy they will gain about one to two stone rather than three to four.
"
Although each plan is individually tailored, a typical diet for a pregnant women might include a choice of porridge and milk or egg and toast for breakfast, chicken and salad for lunch, and pulses and vegetables or cheese and vegetables for dinner. All portions are weighed.
A pregnant women could add 50g of whole grain rice and a handful of nuts or cheese to her daily allowance if she wanted to. As she progresses to later stages of pregnancy she could have extra portions of fruit.
The issue of weight gain during pregnancy is highly controversial because gaining too much weight can lead to diabetes and high blood pressure in the mother while babies born to obese mothers are at higher risk of birth defects.
But gaining too little weight during pregnancy is associated with poor foetal growth, lower birth weight and the chance of a baby being born prematurely.
Other commercial slimming firms, such as WeightWatchers, will not permit pregnant women to attend their classes.
Professor Annie Anderson, director of the centre for human nutrition research at Dundee University, and an expert in nutrition in pregnancy, last night warned that while the diet had "quite good principles" the length of time between meals was "slightly extreme".
She added: "Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is a recognised problem and there is a need to avoid it.
"But I do not think this is a time for slimming. The post-pregnancy period is the time for this. Some studies show that obese pregnant women on controlled calorie diets have a risk of having a low birthweight baby so that has led everyone to say that if there's a risk, then avoid it."
Others warn that women are put under pressure by images of slim celebrities.
A spokeswoman for Beat, the national eating disorders charity said: "Body image does worry women during pregnancy because of unrealistic images of role models, so this is definitely at the forefront of mothers' minds when they should instead be celebrating the joyous event.
"It's very important that the body is not deprived of the nutrients it needs during pregnancy."
Jackie Mitchell, national officer for the Royal College of Midwives in Scotland, said: "If you do have a well balanced diet your weight gain should be OK and one to two stone is what you would ideally gain."
The full article contains 699 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
