Evidence of the importance of maternal nutrition during pregnancy is growing, and
midwives are the healthcare professionals in charge of monitoring pregnancy. In the present review,
the aim is therefore to look at the relevant contributions on midwifery and the role of midwifery
in the provision of nutritional education. Searches were conducted on three databases—Medline,
PubMed Central, and Web of Science—using two key search terms (“nutrition” and “midwives”)
and their synonyms, for an extensive set of results. The final selection consisted of 27 original
papers, most of which concerned the nutritional knowledge of midwives, their training, and their
views, attitudes, and practices within the field of nutrition. According to the findings, although
the midwives considered nutritional education to be part of their role and they agreed on the
importance of nutrition during pregnancy, their knowledge of this topic was poor, perhaps due to
inadequate nutritional education during their midwifery training. Academic programs on midwifery
must therefore be reviewed, so as to increase the workload of nutrition-related subjects, in order to
reinforce the corresponding knowledge bases of future midwives. In addition, based on the success
of the nutritional interventions discussed in the present review, these sorts of initiatives could be
of utmost importance to improve the knowledge of practicing midwives. In any case, it must be
highlighted that the available evidence discussed in this review was drawn from only a few countries
around the world. Further studies involving midwives of varied origins are therefore needed. Such
research would be of immense assistance in the design of the corresponding nutritional interventions
in the field, so as to improve the health of pregnant women.
