Customer Reviews

Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby's First Foods

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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."

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.

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.

Hip, witty, smart, "Real Food for Mother and Baby" is just the thing to mainstream Weston A. Price's brilliant research while distancing wacky, New Age elements one sees in lovely-but-odd books like Nagel's "Healing Our Children." A primary strength of the book is the authorial voice, yet I almost couldn't get past the speed bump of the intro; the author's winsome, youthful, breezy take on mothering at the one-year-plus mark prompted a cynical response from me: "Oh, yeah? Write us again after the second one is born, and you're still in your bathrobe at noon, blah-blah-blah." "Now I understand. Motherhood changes you," she writes. No, no, you don't understand, you're still going for jogs and writing and going on book tours. Some of us have difficult children, and I was never able to resume my work (graduate fellowship at Stanford) or leave my first daughter, colicky, sensitive & acutely prone to separation anxiety from age 2 mos. on, with a sitter. My point is that it's like reading a fresh and lively blog, as opposed to a seasoned life's work, but Planck's done her research.

I followed the Weston A. Price Foundation's dietary protocol during my second pregnancy, meaning that, instead of popping a prenatal vitamin, I consumed vast amounts of raw milk and raw dairy, raw egg smoothies, lard, grss-fed beef, dessicated liver, high-vitamin cod liver oil to 20,000 i.u.s vitamin A, coconut oil, kombucha and other lacto-fermented products for B vitamins, etc. My second daughter was born at home after 4 hours of labor, and like Planck, I eschewed genetic screening of any kind, despite my materna-gravitas status. My daughter is vibrantly healthy, has a super-wide dental palate showing superior bone formation, and my recent lab blood results showed an excellent profile for cholesterol, cardiac function, blood sugar, etc. At some point, the allopathic community will have to recognize the scientific validity of what so many smart, educated mothers are figuring out. My daughter's first foods were mashed egg yolk with sea salt and grated raw liver, homemade chicken stock out of a tea cup, etc., and at age three, she's still nursing. I like the way Planck cooks, which is how I cook, without recipes, just an assemblage of whole ingredients. What I found most fascinating was her discussion of seafood, and I realized I'd been relying on cod liver oil for healthy fats that really can only be assimilated by eating fish; so--to the fish market I go.

Reading Planck's book made me philosophize about the loss of maternal wisdom in our culture, paralleling the diminished nutrient reserves each generation of women has passed on to the next--thus the inheritable miasms. Who will feed me? she asks at one point, a vulnerable nursing mom. I suspect she had good help, since her mother was a pioneer in nutrition. I had to educate my mother, to be directive and explain the sanctity of cooking--as opposed to ordering pizza--to a woman who used to be a gourmet cook but who now, in her 60's, considered popcorn and a glass of wine a complete dinner. My single, childless brother, ironically, demonstrated the greatest empathy in his gift of jars of homemade beef stock, bread from soaked grains, and beef marrow spread on toast. More typical of the American experience was my mother-in-law, who hates to cook and relies heavily on industrialized convenience foods. When she came to visit after the new baby's birth, she was on the Jenny Craig diet and brought her own tiny packets and sachets of "food." She certainly had no intention of shopping, cooking, or cleaning while she stayed, and her fantasy of grandmothering involved putting on her walking shoes and taking the newborn for long stroller rides while chalking up miles on the tachometer. When the newborn objected with dramatic screams, my mother-in-law began to sulk and pout, lying on the couch reading novels like a teenager or chatting on the cell phone endlessly, complaining that she didn't "feel needed." What a tragedy! I am hopeful that books like Planck's will return women to their ancient wisdom and primal source of strength.

Nina Planck is an advocate for what she calls 'real food.' These are the staples of our ancestors, prepared in traditional ways. Fruits, vegetables, eggs, meats, cheese, and milk minimally processed if processed at all. Planck provides compelling arguments for eating this way based on nutritional comparisons.

While some of the ideas she presents for general eating and eating during pregnancy fall quite far from mainstream thinking, she does provide science to back up her claims. The stories she shares of her own pregnancy and how it shaped her diet are interesting. Although there were some aspects of her experiences that I would not have shared during my own pregnancy (such as having glasses of wine), I was able to take away some good information from this section of the book.

Planck lost me, however, when it came to the section on baby's first foods. Essentially she fed her son chunks of various table foods almost from the beginning of his solid food experience. While I do not doubt the nutritional value of the foods she was feeding him, my concern is that some of the foods she mentioned would present a potential choking hazard. I simply cannot imagine letting my eight month old daughter chew on a pork chop! Planck also threw out all conventional wisdom regarding babies and allergies, giving her son many foods before his first birthday that most doctors do not recommend.

I enjoyed reading this book and I do feel that I learned something from it. I think each person reading this book will have to find their own comfort level with the information presented and take what they can use while leaving the rest behind.

If you haven't read Nina Planck's groundbreaking first book Real Food: What To Eat and Why, then you owe it to yourself to grab yourself a copy of that instant health classic and absorb all the education about what real food actually is. In this sequel of sorts, Planck wanted to direct her attention to a place near and dear to her heart-babies and the mommies who have them.

While writing and doing book tours for Real Food, she got pregnant and was traveling around the country when people kept asking her, "What are you eating for a healthy pregnancy?" It invariably happened everywhere she went, so Planck decided it was a topic worthy of another book.

But don't think this book encourages new moms to stuff the mouths of their little ones with all the traditional baby foods that you see lined up for miles on store shelves-that's NOT real baby food. Try healthy meats, fish, eggs and other fat-filled foods that are designed to make babies grow and develop properly in those essential early years.

At the same time, Planck addresses exactly what the mother should be eating during the pregnancy that may actually shock some people (hint: it ain't junk food!) who are unaware that getting pregnant doesn't give women license to eat whatever they want without consequences. Conventional myths about the proper fertility diet to create a strong, healthy and happy baby are addressed directly in this book and it makes a perfect gift for new moms-to-be and baby showers.

This book could not have shown up in my life at a better time. Devastated by the loss of my first pregnancy, I was diagnosed with PCOS and set out to discover what I could do to make sure I did everything in my power to have a healthy, full term baby on my next go round. After searching through many versions of rigid, impossible to follow "PCOS diets", Real Food for Mother and Baby was a God send. Finally, real, common sense advice and solid research to help me fight off my insulin resistance issues (which have led to PCOS). To top it off, it's in extremely readable form. Everyone knows that we should eat real food, not fake food, right? But what I didn't know was just how fake most of what is to be found in the supermarket really is. One example: Even basic skim milk, a commonly accepted staple of a 'healthy diet', is extremely processed and damaged by the time it reaches our shopping carts. The result of this newfound information resulted in my introduction to raw milk- so delicious it serves as my dessert most nights! And it's packed full of nutrients cooked out of most store bought milk.

You will find endless tidbits of information and detailed explanations of the various nutrients your body needs to conceive and carry a baby, and it is all fascinating stuff. But the best part of the book is that in the end, everything is quite simple and easy to remember. Planck even breaks down the most basic needs for each trimester, making the complicated pregnancy-eating mind game as reassuringly easy as a refrigerator chart. I am endlessly grateful for this, as when I found out I was pregnant the first time, I was terrified to eat at all. Worried about eating too little, too much, the wrong thing, the right thing at the wrong time... suffice to say, I am relieved beyond measure to have this new basic understanding of what my baby needs at different stages of development. And it's not necessarily what your OB or the FDA will tell you!

As a side note, woven in with all of the great nutrition information is the story of Planck's own pregnancy, birth, and the first two years of her son's life- making her instantly relatable and interesting.

I am feeling great since changing my focus to eating only real food, and am very optimistic that I will get pregnant again soon and carry to term. Thank you Nina Planck, for writing such a user friendly, common sense guide to eating well not just for pregnancy, but for life!

My husband and I based our "fertility diet" off of Real Food For Mother and Baby, ate like royalty as a result, and (with help from Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook and The Natural Pregnancy Book: Herbs, Nutrition, and Other Holistic Choices) succeeded in getting pregnant on our first try. I'm now using the book's very flexible and informative guidelines for nutrition during all stages of my pregnancy, and I feel like a million bucks.

My family has a history of debilitating morning sickness and fatigue during pregnancy, but with these food guidelines I feel I've been able to give my body what it needs before it asks. I work 50+ hrs/week as a farmer, and following the guidelines set forth in this book I feel strong and wonderful and baby is progressing beautifully.

Nina Planck has an easy to read and relate to, laid back, and super informative writing style. I read the book from front to back and now look to its index to use it as a reference book when questions come up. She has studied all sorts of perspectives on nutrition and health, and draws from all of these perspectives to create a well integrated expression of what our bodies can most (and least) benefit from (in broad and specific) pre-preggers, during pregnancy, and postpartum. The suggestions are flexible and based around the idea that an organic whole foods diet rooted in the tradition of our species eating REAL food is best for all. Fantastic resource.

When our budget permits I really look forward to getting her "Real Food: What to Eat and Why" book also :-)

I like the book but it lacks some details. For instance she says just do this or that very casually but then when you read where she did something very specific later. She says to just feed your kid what you're eating and then later describes how she did not feed her child anything that was a combo food (like a soup or casserole), only single foods (such as a carrot) for several months. I found that kind of frustrating.

On the other hand, this is a good supplement for Nourishing Traditions and support for my natural/real food philosophy. I can show others that I have multiple resources saying it is ok to feed your baby egg yolks.

well a bit of a disapointment. contrary to what nina says on her website, she does not in fact follow all the nourishing guidelines outlined by dr. price or sally fallon. it is a good book for those who want to do better, eating wise, than they are currently doing and to get a better grasp on what real nutrition is. if you follow her advice you will be doing better than most americans by far. but if it is real traditional eating you want stick to Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Healing our Children by Ramiel Nagel.