No-one’s going to dispute the importance of pregnant women eating healthy food, but one wonders whether this new policy has any hope of achieving its aims – even whether it’s been put out to consultation, taking into account the lukewarm response from the likes of the Royal College of Midwives and the premature baby charity BLISS.

Politicians are saying that it will target rates of infant mortality and is an attempt to reduce the wealth-health inequality gap, so there’s a clear intention that the Health in Pregnancy grants are to be regarded as part of a wider prevention strategy. And there’s certainly evidence that poor nutrition during pregnancy is a significant risk for low birth-weight babies

But it’s not the only factor; other culprits include alcohol and drug abuse, smoking and chronic illness.

There’s also little dispute about the wide variation in infant mortality rates in England, which range from as low as 1.5 deaths per 1,000 live births in parts of Surrey to over 12 in central Birmingham. Neighborhood deprivation helps to explain the discrepancy, but the logical connection to poor diet is far from straightforward and wants further research. For example, parents in these communities may be disproportionately exposed to other stressors or they may be more likely to use alcohol.

If it was possible to show that all or most pregnant women who eat badly do so simply because they can’t afford the right foods, then it would justify the investment. But it isn’t like that; and, even if it were, it would only force one to question whether the allowance paid to families on low income makes healthy eating affordable in the first place?

Why should we only become concerned about these women once they are pregnant, and why wait until the twenty-ninth week when much of a foetus’s critical development takes place earlier.

They way things stand, implementation of the new policy may be a salutary experience. For example, there are no checks in place to ensure that the money is spent on healthy food, and there appears to be little intention to link the new grants with the well established ‘five-a-day’ message. This is despite evidence that public-health approaches targeting general population trends, such as poor food choices or eating habits, are generally more successful.

Government is saying that while the benefit will not be means-tested (which would have been one way to target the wealth-health gap), any woman wanting to receive the benefit will be asked to a meeting with a health professional. What sort of meeting that might be has still to be explained but it’s unlikely that any one-off tips or advice will translate into consistently informed choices about appropriate foods.

Without education and information about what constitutes the ‘right’ food and what are the healthiest ways to prepare it, the £200 is only likely to fill supermarket cash-tills – which know nothing and care less about the nutrtitional difference between crisps, cakes and calabrese!

• See for example BBC coverage Eat well cash for mothers-to-be 8 September 2007