This complete guide will give you an overview of the Brewer Diet, checklist, sample menu, tips to help you be successful and much more.
Struggling to figure out what types of food and how much to eat for a healthy pregnancy? I had the same problem, until I stumbled upon the Brewer Diet while reading the Bradley Method Childbirth.
Note that all blog posts are for information only and are not meant as medical advice. Please discuss and make informed decisions with your trusted medical and/or care providers.
Click to where you want to go:
- What is the Brewer Diet?
- Why is proper nutrition important during pregnancy?
- Brewer Diet and Preeclampsia
- Does the Brewer Diet work?
- When is Dr. Brewer’s Diet important?
- Brewer Pregnancy Diet Checklist
- Brewer Diet Sample Menu
- What has my experience been with the Brewer Diet?
- Tips for Brewer Diet Success
- Summary
- Resources
- Here are some great podcast episodes about the Brewer Diet that I enjoyed listening to:
- Check out the Dr. Brewer Pregnancy Nutrition Facebook Group for amazing resources to help you with your Brewer Diet Journey.
What is the Brewer Diet?
No, it has nothing to do with Brewer’s yeast. It is also not a diet, really. The Brewer Diet is a nutritional guide developed by Dr. Tom Brewer, an OBGYN who practiced for over 40 years.
Dr. Brewer believed that good nutrition could prevent or treat various complications of pregnancy including metabolic toxemia of late pregnancy (MTLP), anemia, abruption of the placenta, premature labor, and more. [1]
Dr. Tom Brewer was known to summarize the diet by stating “Eat to appetite, drink to thirst, and salt to taste”. The Brewer nutritional guide consists of 2600 calories, 80-120 grams of protein, salt to taste and unrestricted weight gain.
It is made up of the following 14 food groups:
If you are vegan or vegeterian, check out the Vegan Brewer Pregnancy Diet and Vegetarian Brewer Diet.
Why is proper nutrition important during pregnancy?
Reading through Joy Jone’s article on “Nutrition and Blood Volume Work Together for a Healthy Pregnancy”, I found out the following facts:
- In order for our body to support the pregnancy and nourish the baby, our blood volume increases about 50% over the course of the pregnancy.
- Our liver makes albumin – a protein that helps keep fluid in the bloodstream and helps carry vitamins and nutrients throughout our body. The albumin helps facilitate the increase in blood volume.
- Amino acids (which are the building blocks of albumin, our baby’s cells and our own muscle cells) are derived from the protein that we consume. That is why it is so important for a pregnant woman to eat enough protein.
- Salt is important because it creates osmotic pressure which helps pull extra fluid out of the tissues and into circulation. [1]
If a pregnant woman is not getting enough protein, calories or salt, then this may create complications to the pregnancy. Please check out Joy Jone’s article if you’d like to read more about possible complications due to malnutrition.
Brewer Diet and Preeclampsia
With regards to preeclampsia (previously called toxemia), Dr. Brewer states the following in this interview:
“This diet will prevent toxemia, other maternal complications, and all kinds of neurological, physical, motor, and behavior abnormalities in the child. I tested this diet for over 30 years on thousands of patients and those who followed it never had eclampsia, anemia, abruption of the placenta, severe infections of the lungs, kidneys, or liver, low birth weight babies, premature birth, or miscarriage, and all of their children were healthy.
It takes courage to adopt this diet because the concept behind it, that malnutrition is the cause of toxemia and other diseases associated with pregnancy, remains very unpopular in American obstetrics.” [2]
Here is a screenshot of some of the sources mentioned in the interview:
You can read the rest of the interview and check out the sources cited at http://healthybirth.net/an-interview-with-dr-tom-brewer/.
If you are concerned about pre-eclampsia and would like more support, I highly recommend you join the Dr. Brewer Pregnancy Nutrition Facebook Group. The admin of this group is Joy Jones, R.N. and they provide so much information.
Does the Brewer Diet work?
From the forums that I have read, there are pregnant women who religiously follow the Brewer Diet and still develop preeclampsia.
However, The Brewer’s diet is based on Dr. Thomas Brewer’s 40 years of research. Dr. Brewer ran the prenatal clinics of Contra Costa County from 1963 to 1976, over 25,000 women followed [the Brewer Diet] guidelines with success [2].
His findings were published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine as a preliminary report. A retrospective study of 5,615 pregnancies in Contra Costa was conducted by the National Institute of Health and no cases of eclampsia were found [2].
To answer the question, everyone is different and not one solution will work for everyone.
After doing a cost benefit analysis for myself, I decided to follow the Brewer diet because nutrition is one of the things that I can control to prepare for the best possible outcome for my pregnancy/delivery.
The only “cost” that I can think of when following this diet is that I may pack on a few more pounds. So, in my case, the benefits definitely outweigh the costs.
You will have to do your own cost benefit analysis to determine if the Brewer Diet is right for you.
When is Dr. Brewer’s Diet important?
The Brewer Diet is important throughout the entire pregnancy:
- During the first trimester – the Brewer Diet can minimize morning sickness, aids blood volume expansion and promotes the building of baby and uterine muscle cells.
- For the second trimester – proper nutrition is “important for optimal placental development”. [1]
- During the third trimester – the Brewer diet is important to do the following:
- Build up fluid reserves for labor
- Ensure the placenta is nourished well enough to keep functioning
- To support baby’s brain development (baby’s brain goes through its most rapid rate of growth in the last 2 months of pregnancy)
Brewer Pregnancy Diet Checklist
You can download and print this checklist to help keep track of your daily food intake.
Also, it’s important to note that if you miss some portion of a food group on one day, you can make up that portion some other day in the week.
Brewer Diet Sample Menu
The following is what I typically eat in a day:
Snack: greek yogurt with granola and fruit
Breakfast: 2 eggs, 2 sausages, a slice of wheat bread and a cup of milk
Snack: smoothie – yogurt, 2 tbsp of butter, spinach, strawberries, milk, chia seeds and ground flax seeds
Lunch: Tuna or egg sandwich
Snack: carrots and celery with peanut butter
Dinner: chicken breast, quinoa, and sautéed veggies
Snack: smoothie – yogurt, 2 tbsp of butter, spinach, strawberries, milk, chia seeds and ground flax seeds
Snack: cottage cheese with strawberries and dark chocolate chips
What has my experience been with the Brewer Diet?
My experience has been great! I wish I had learned about the Brewer Diet during my first pregnancy because I definitely feel a difference between this pregnancy and my last one.
The main three positive changes I’ve experienced are:
- more energized throughout the day
- I don’t have leg cramps at night
- no cravings (which is a sign I am getting proper nutrition)
Tips for Brewer Diet Success
Just one look at the food group list or the checklist can be overwhelming! I totally get it.
I found the following things have helped me stay on track with my nutrition:
- Learning and understanding why my body depends on proper nutrition to keep myself and (more importantly for me) my baby healthy.
- Thinking about eating as if I am feeding the baby. For example, when it is time to eat I say to myself, “it’s time to feed the baby.”
- Put a timer on every two hours to remind myself to eat!
- I make extra food when I cook so that there are leftovers for the next few days.
- I pack nutritious snacks whenever I am on the go.
- Finally, I try not to stress over my nutrition and know that I can make up a food group I missed later on in the week.
Summary
To recap, nutrition is very important for pregnancy. Proper nutrition can prevent many pregnancy complications based on Dr. Brewer’s research.
While the Brewer Diet can seem overwhelming, I hope that the tips above are useful. Also, do not stress over your nutrition if it hasn’t been the best thus far, we all do what we can. But it is important to do better when we know better.
Don’t forget to download the Nutrition Checklist to help you stay accountable.
If you would like to join me in my pregnancy/motherhood journey, I welcome you to join the Engineer to Mommy Community by joining email list!
Resources
[1] http://www.drbrewerpregnancydiet.com/id11.html
[2] http://healthybirth.net/an-interview-with-dr-tom-brewer/
RJamon says
I can’t seem to find how/where to download the checklist… am I missing something?
engineertomommy says
Here is the link to the checklist – https://theengineertomommy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Brewer-Diet-Checklist-3.pdf
Thanks for asking! Let me know if you have any other questions! 🙂