After wondering where the rules of food and beverage consumption during pregnancy came from, Emily Oster did her own research to find out just exactly how much coffee and wine are OK during the nine-month period.
Oster, an associate professor at University of Chicago's business school, does not have a medical background whatsoever. She did, however, perform enough research to write a book on the amount of data she found, proving many accepted theories surrounding pregnancy to be baseless in facts, according to San Jose Mercury News.
Her book, "Expecting Better," was published last week by Penguin Press. It criticizes the slow pace of research done on different aspects of what is considered safe and unsafe for pregnant women.
Some of her conclusions include that three to four cups of coffee per day and light drinking (as much as two glasses of wine during the first trimester and a glass a day in the second and third trimesters) are harmless.
Oster said she made clear in her book that she is no way endorses heavy drinking during pregnancy, but that the decision to drink or not is "personal" and has not statistically proven to pose a threat.
"I think we can all agree that heavy drinking and binge drinking, even occasionally, is very dangerous, and I certainly say that in the book," she said. "What I found is there are a large number of quite good studies with a lot of women that show having an occasional glass of wine does not seem to pose a problem, that children of pregnant women who drink occasionally have similar or in some cases even better outcomes than children of women who abstain."
When asked if she thought women were "needlessly suffering," Oster responded that she thinks the amount of importance people place on pregnancy is great but can also be counterproductive.
"I think we've moved this way over time and in some ways it's very good, thinking through pregnancy and parenting in a thoughtful and careful way," she said. "I think that's great. But I think there is, sometimes, this kind of shaming aspect to pregnancy. That's maybe not so productive."
