Japanese doctors insist pregnant mums diet

I've had one baby in Japan. It wasn't fun experience, for many reasons. One of the minor reasons is explained in this article. There is a scary trend here: Doctors who insist women diet during pregnancy. It has been going on for decades.  In the article it suggests that one reason could be:

In a country where fewer than 1 in 10 maternity hospitals can offer women an epidural, the anesthetic procedure that numbs the lower half of the body, smaller babies may be easier to deliver.

 In the article, Mark Hanson, chairman of the International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease is quoted as saying:

"Japan is an extraordinary country," he said. "It's the only developed country in the world which is increasing the risk of its disease by both reducing the adequacy of nutrition of the fetus at one end and then Westernizing at the other end."

 I'm not sure what the "Westernizing" bit means, maybe that more people are eating unhealthy Western take-away diets.

I basically ignored the berating I received from the midwives and doctors. They were more concerned about the blood test results. Probably they comforted themselves thinking I was a Westerner anyway, destined to have big (i.e. over 3kg) anyway.