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75 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you're even thinking about having a baby, this is Required Reading, April 2, 2009
This review is from: Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby's First Foods (Paperback)
When we last heard from Nina Planck, she was a leader in the crusade for Real Food. Her precepts are, by now, familiar:
--- Eat foods with a long history in the human diet (peaches, spinach, lard).
--- Eat them in a whole state, or close to it, or produced in a traditional manner.
--- Eat foods that spoil. But eat them before they do.
--- Don't eat anything that's engineered to be something it's not --- low in something or high in something else. That includes orange juice with DHA --- the vital fatty acid found chiefly in fish --- made from algae. God or Nature (as you prefer) made us fish-eaters. You don't find fish in orange juice.
From the perspective of this household, she's one of the smarties, and her book belongs on the alongside the writing of Michael Pollan. Food writing like this comes less from academic study than from life experience, and Planck has of that --- she grew up on an organic farm and headed New York's Greenmarket. So it's hardly surprising that, when she got pregnant, she would soon be writing about a sensible diet for expectant mothers, what to eat after the baby's born, and what to find the little heir or heiress.
It helps to have read her first book. But worry not. In Real Food for Mother and Baby, Planck summarizes her previous writing. And on the strength of her story, she's doing something right: Five months after her son was born, she was wearing her "prepregnancy jeans".
But let's start with getting pregnant, which is easy to do if you're 19 and unmarried, harder to do if you're in your 30s and working hard. Your diet, she says, "can even affect your baby's genes in the womb." So you want to be in shape to be preggers. Planck pushes for an omnivore's diet and emphasizes the importance of fish oil. For better sperm, she suggests that men eat foods rich in vitamins A and E together.
Eating for two? Planck doesn't buy it. Better, she says, to eat well. But she's no nun. A glass of wine now and then does not, she believes, condemn the fetus to a stunted brain. Especially if you're stoking your body with iron --- by which she especially means red meat or liver, ideally from animals that were raised without drugs.
Once the kid is here, life gets easier. If, that is, you're nursing. Milk, she notes, is all a baby needs for six months. That's another reason for you to eat Real Food: "Thirty minutes after you eat an orange, Vitamin C appears in your milk, just like that." That doesn't mean you can't have some wine: "Once you metabolize alcohol, it disappears from your milk."
I had no idea that the baby's brain has remarkable growth in the first three months of life. Again, all the more reason for the mother to eat lots of "brain food". Want your kid, at age four, to leave other children in the dust? Take cod liver oil during pregnancy and the "fourth trimester."
Once the baby can take solid food, you may part company with Planck. "Raw ground beef or lamb with olive oil and salt?" Yikes! I see the logic. But still: yikes! I'm more comfortable reading about a traditional Italian regime for toddlers: grated Parmesan mixed with olive oil.
Whatever your disagreements with Planck, you can't fault her for stinting on her research. And so you pick up helpful tidbits along the way:
-- "Apple peels contain up to 40 percent of the antioxidant flavonoids in an apple and about one-third of the vitamin C."
-- "Unrefined sea salt contains about 80 essential minerals and trace elements."
-- "Statins, the class of drugs that stops your liver from making LDL, deplete your body of the antioxidant coenzyme CoQ10, which the heart muscle depends on."
Of all her advice, though, there's one suggestion that leaps out at me. Not only because of the common-sense wisdom at the heart of it. Even more, I admire her last line: "Stop searching for the new and the fake. Don't read the latest 'nutrition' bulletins. Eat old foods. Don't eat too much. That should leave time for other, satisfying activities --- like reading a novel."
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Information - Much Overlap with "Real Food", May 6, 2009
This review is from: Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby's First Foods (Paperback)
I really looked forward to reading this book and was a little disappointed after finishing it. To be sure, there was a solid amount of new information in this book related to pregnancy and fertility foods. I found the information on the fetus' development,and consequently what their nutritional needs were at each stage, fascinating. It makes complete sense to eat more healthy fat later in pregnancy when baby's brain is growing most rapidly and needs all that fat. Dietary recommendations for trying to get pregnant would likely be helpful and different information than many have read as well.
On the other hand, there was naturally quite a bit of overlap between this book and Planck's first book, "Real Food". I think if you were to pick this book up without having read "Real Food" it would make a lot of sense and flow just fine. For a reader such as myself who pored over "Real Food" previously, a lot of this book was redundant and less than earth shattering. Essentially, Planck's advice boils down to much the same in both books: eat traditional, real foods that have been around for centuries and feed them to your baby. Both books could probably be summed up right there, although of course there's great information in each to help the reader understand why foods we're currently afraid of in this country (butter, whole milk, fish) are really very good for you.
I found Planck's personal struggles with her son's first pediatrician interesting. I enjoyed reading the information she included related to attachment parenting though I didn't necessarily think a food book was the best place to extol on its virtues.
All in all, I think this book will be helpful to first-time moms and women wanting to get pregnant who have never before read "Real Food". Just don't expect too much if you are already immersed in a traditional, whole foods mindset.
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Show This Book To Your Midwife or Doctor, July 28, 2009
This review is from: Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby's First Foods (Paperback)
The book begins with Nina defining what real food is. She says, "My definition of real food is based on science, but it's not meant to be technical... Here goes: Real Food is old and it's traditional." What Nina thinks is real, is what humans have eaten since the Stone Age. Fish, fowl, insects, eggs, leaves, nuts and berries.
Real food is a mixture of science and Nina's life as a mother. It includes witty humor and raw emotion. Here's a chapter by chapter summary to give you a better idea of why I recommend this book.
In the first chapter, she delves into science on fat, cholesterol, coenzyme Q-10.
She talks about how she grew up on a farm, and got real milk. Real milk, is raw. It isn't pasteurized, homogenized, and comes from cows that eat grass. Real meat comes from an animal that eats its natural diet, it doesn't have hormones and antibiotics. Real fish is not farm raised. It is wild. (Nina also recommends fish oil if you don't like fish).
Real fruit and vegetables are heirloom, organic, or naturally grown. Preferably they come from the farmer's market.
Nina offers us some practical advice, "People worry too much about how to cook vegetables." Real fat is fried chicken, buttered toast and whole milk. Rightfully Nina tells us about the harm of fake fats, industrial fats such as corn, safflower, sunflower and soybean oils.
Nina is a fan of moderate amounts of alcohol. So she did forget to add "Real Beer" and "Real Wine" to her first chapter. :)
Chapter 2 is the Fertility Diet
She explains how up until recently, grandmothers, and aunts new good food advice for expectant moms. But today they have "dropped the ball" on fertility diets. She likens official government advice to "the Dark Ages."
Nina introduces four fertility rules and explains them in detail.
1. Be and Omnivore
2. Fat and Fertility - basically fat is good
3. The Seafood Principle (yes, we should eat fish)
4. Don't Eat Carbage (white-flour, sugar, polished rice, modern vegetable oils)
Nina gives us tips on coming off the birth control pill and mercury fillings. Nina has a handy chart of specific vitamins that are good for fertility and foods where they can be found. Liver, milk, meat, clams, fish, oysters, and eggs are all on the list. She explains the importance of vitamins A, E, D, and K. The fat-soluble vitamins. And gives tips for men as well. More liver, nuts, fruit, and vegetables. Nina then gives some personal anecdotes and more science behind her assertions.
Chapter 3 - Forty Weeks.
"Lots of actions, all of it inside." writes Nina. This is about the first trimester, second, and third trimester of pregnancy. She talks about hormones, high fat foods, eating more beef, her food diary. Nina prefers the Adelle Davis's diet over the suggestions of the Weston A. Price foundation. She finds that butter, eggs, and seafood are the best foods for the first trimester.
Here you get more about wine and pregnancy, stories about Nina's life and how to deal with NVP (Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy)
Chapter 4 - Nursing
Nina had a very emotional time after her first son was born. That is great to hear of a women sharing her personal raw feelings with the world. Nina's "Pro Life" point of view is on the importance of probiotics. She sites several examples why breastmilk is best, and gives dietary advice from Papua New Guinea. She advises new mom's to just relaxed and not scrutinize every crumb that is going into their mouths.
Nina even had her breastmilk tested at a laboratory. And tells us of Le Petit Singly, a cheese made from human milk. Nina is very concerned that trans fats stay out of the milk. She believes that fish fat is the queen of the fats. DHA is being used up by the breastfeeding infant. The chapter has many reminders how brestmilk is the best.
Nina recommends against childbirth preparation classes, which doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Then she talks about her own perspective on breastfeeding. Here Planck describes traditional wisdom this reminded me of Nagel's highly acclaimed Healing Our Children: Because Your New Baby Matters! Sacred Wisdom for Preconception, Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting (ages 0-6), of breastfeeding on cue. Because human babies, are "Just like monkeys," in relation to breastfeeding. She supports breastfeeding as a mother's "full time job."
Nina gives great advice on feeding baby foods. Giving them real foods, just in small amounts. First food suggestions for babies include raw milk, cheese and yogurt - these are all excellent whole food ideas. Nina rightly states that "cereal is good" for you is a myth and recommends instead, bone broth for babies. Nina of course loves Real Raw milk for her little one. She then tells and amusing story of how she got allot of heat for an article against veganism for children. It's an interesting story. The point she is trying to make, is veganism isn't good for children. Case closed.
There is alot of story on how she came to making decisions about the food she feeds her son Julian. The stories include a struggle with a dumb doctor who tells her to stop breastfeeding. Nina is a big fan of cod liver oil. In the end, Nina talks about her small farm dreams. This is an excellent book. It's also worth mentioning that there is another book that covers child raising in more detail, as well as goes into great depth on healthy foods, nutrition and schooling for parents who want to have happy and healthy babies, it's called, Healing Our Children: Because Your New Baby Matters! Sacred Wisdom for Preconception, Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting (ages 0-6) Real food and Healing Our Children are 5 stars in my book.
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