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. Consider it a game of telephone concerning the nutrition of the human growing inside of you.
Enter Needed, a science-backed women’s nutrition company founded by two mothers and trained nutritionists who noticed what the research confirmed: that women are routinely nutritionally depleted at the most demanding stages of their lives, and that the guidelines meant to prevent that are built on a foundation that largely excluded them.
Cue the deep breaths. This company collaborates with clinicians and researchers to translate modern evidence into practical, actionable support, and has made pushing for policy change (not just selling supplements, by the way) central to its mission.
Needed’s current national campaign calls on Congress and federal agencies to update pregnancy and breastfeeding nutrition standards using population-specific, 21st-century science.
Needed’s supplement line is built on a simple premise: if the federal guidelines don’t reflect what pregnant and breastfeeding women actually need, the product shouldn’t either. Formulations are developed in direct collaboration with clinicians and researchers, prioritizing bioavailable ingredients calibrated to the demands of fertility, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and beyond. The vitamin D gap alone — standard supplementation levels produce breast milk with concentrations too low to meet a breastfed infant’s daily requirements — illustrates why off-the-shelf prenatal vitamins built on 1941 data may be leaving mothers and babies short, even when moms do everything right.
This article was written by Kendall Cornish, New York Post Commerce Editor & Reporter. Kendall, who moonlights as a private chef in the Hamptons for New York elites, lends her expertise to testing and recommending cooking products – for beginners and aspiring sous chefs alike. Simmering and seasoning her way through both jobs, Kendall dishes on everything from the best cookware for your kitchen to chef-approved gourmet meal kits to the full suite of Ninja appliances. Prior to joining the Post’s shopping team in 2023, Kendall previously held positions at Apartment Therapy and at Dotdash Meredith’s Travel + Leisure and Departures magazines.
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