A review by mrsthrift
The Fertility Diet by Jorge E. Chavarro

4.0

This book is driven by conclusions drawn from the Nurses Health Study. The NHS was a multi-decade study of over 120,000 female RN's, and tracked everything from diet and exercise to lifestyle choices. With all that data, patterns start to emerge, and a lot of people have been trying to make sense of it. So, here's a book that attempts to draw conclusions between certain lifestyle practices, and increased fertility, with all other factors being equal or accounted for (smoking, birth control use, relationship status, etc). There are several basic tenets that arise out of the swirling data clouds. Most are obvious to anyone with a pretty rudimentary understanding of the female reproductive system, but there are a few surprises. There is a lot of dietary advice - is caffeine really bad for your fertility? how much ice cream helps make a baby? (one serving per day!!) good carbs, good fats, staying hydrated, and plant proteins are recommended alongside exercise and losing 7.5% of your body weight. There's no magic bullet here, just some common sense ideas that, put together, likely culminate in a higher rate of fertility. The presentation is rooted in research, but mostly accessible, although some of the pedantic scientific reasoning is a yawnfest for someone who has baby fever. I don't think I need to read it again, but I did take pretty detailed notes while I was reading, so I absorbed most of the pertinent info.