Real Food for Mother and Baby The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby’s First Foods
By Nina Planck
Bloomsbury, 2009

Nina Planck’s landmark book, Real Food: What to Eat and Why, was a bold and enthusiastic promotion of traditional, old-fashioned foods, and especially of long-revered animal fats such as butter and lard. Since the birth of her first child, Planck has now followed up with Real Food for Mother and Baby and, as readers might expect, this book is in part a reprise of many of the key nutrition discussions of her earlier work, with a particular focus on fertility and pregnancy diets. At first glance Planck’s advice seems comprehensive and sound; her upbeat reassurances beam from the pages. She uses all the right words; she invokes the name of Weston Price. Soon though, the reader finds that Planck did not follow these guidelines; she ends up reducing traditional dietary recommendations to such a degree that these shortcuts sabotage the very wisdom that informed her guidelines in the first place. Her predilection for breezy simplification results in serious misrepresentation and confusion.

For instance, “The Fertility Diet” chapter has plenty of good, detailed advice for both men and women who wish to conceive. “If you’re ready to have a baby, change your diet first,” Planck counsels. Be an omnivore for access to diverse nutrients; get those fat-soluble vitamins by eating the right fatty foods; indulge in plenty of clean seafood; and avoid simple carbohydrates in their many industrial guises. For those unsure of their diet, however, Planck falls back to recommending a basic prenatal multivitamin and taking extra folic acid rather than emphasizing the especially important foods that provide these nutrients: “If you eat plenty of real food, that’s all you need to do [take a multivitamin plus folic acid]. If you don’t, I suggest a little cod liver oil for vitamins A and D. If you’re surprised to find yourself pregnant, don’t fret. Just start eating well. Most mothers and babies do just fine.”

Planck reduces her fertility advice to one short paragraph called “Five Easy Pieces,”—a simplified list of only five foods: “For vitamins A, D, and K₂, drink whole milk. For vitamin E, be generous with extra-virgin olive oil. For folate, have a green salad. For iodine, eat wild salmon, or any seafood. For zinc and vitamin B₁₂, any red meat will do. It’s just plain real food, and substituting other real foods is fine.”

Planck’s recommendation for whole milk to provide vitamins A, D and K₂ has the effect of obscuring and diminishing the conclusions of Dr. Price. Whole milk will provide small amounts of vitamins A, D and K₂ if—very big if—the cows are eating rapidly growing green grass in the spring and fall; a container of whole milk from the grocery store is unlikely to contain vitamins A and K₂, and the vitamin D will have been added. The store milk is likely pasteurized or ultrapasteurized, a process that compromises the lactoglobulins that help the body absorb vitamins A and D. In any event, Dr. Price never recommended whole milk as a good source of A, D and K₂ (his Activator X). Raw whole milk from pasture-fed cows is an excellent source of calcium, minerals and a range of other nutrients, but it cannot supply adequate fat-soluble activators to ensure successful reproduction and optimal development in the child—you need cod liver oil, organ meats, certain seafoods and plenty of grass-fed butter for that. So the devil is in the details, which Planck cheerfully glosses over.

Thus Planck’s Panglossian assurances regarding dietary requirements and women’s pregnancy and birth outcomes are blindly optimistic, amounting to a kind of deception. The inescapable reality in America today is that we have a crisis in reproductive outcomes directly affected by our generally deplorable diet. Planck is carefree, however: “My own fertility diet was basic. I took extra folic acid and a little cod liver oil. . . Here and there my diary says ‘bison heart’ or some other obscure traditional food, but I can assure you those meals were rare. Most American women get pregnant without eating bison heart.” While that last statement may be strictly true, with current U.S. infertility rates reported at about 25 percent, serious problems like these need accurate advice and serious solutions.

Planck introduces the research of Weston Price, and particularly his observations of the nutrition practices of the native peoples he visited who exhibited superb health and reproductive vigor. Unlike Planck, Price was humbled by the great care and attention these people devoted to nurturing the next generation—not just choosing any old milk or meat, but going to great lengths to procure special foods, especially for mothers-to-be. And of course these people were already consuming nothing but nutritious real foods, as well as drinking clean water and breathing clean air in undefiled environments. Nonetheless, their native wisdom demanded that young men and women preparing for marriage, and that pregnant women, new mothers and young children should regularly receive still more of these especially important foods to ensure perfect health for future generations. This philosophy of nurturance (not to mention the long view on our dependence on one another) sounds extraordinary to many today, but the message remains that preparing for childbirth is an undertaking of the highest commitment and dedication.

By stark contrast, Planck was fourteen when she decided to become a vegan in order to lose weight. At precisely the age when young women in the traditional groups Price studied were receiving extra nutrition for their reproductive health, Planck embarked on a voluntary exile into a nutritional wasteland that lasted about a decade. Even after she transitioned from vegan to vegetarian in order to eat fat-free yogurt, her consumption of fat was never more than a trickle of olive oil, and her diet never included animal fats. It was during her stay in London in her twenties and her work in establishing farmers’ markets there that she found herself in the midst of a cornucopia of real foods and finally came to her senses. Nevertheless, the dark legacy of those critically vulnerable years in the nutritional desert is worrying. Although Planck never reflected on the possible damage caused by those years of sub-optimal nutrition, astute readers ought to take heed when regarding their own reproductive health history. Those who have been vegans or lowfat vegetarians need to follow a diet of truly nutrient-dense foods, with keen attention to detail, for considerable time before getting pregnant.

Planck addresses the question of environmental pollutants and their effects on the developing fetus, recalling with chagrin the herbicides her parents used on their farm during her childhood. Of course, farm children bear the greatest risk of accumulated chemical exposures and later effects. Rather than focus about what might be residing in her body and how to find dietary protection now that she was newly pregnant, Planck decided instead to think positively and continue on as before. Planck’s situation ought to at least provide a warning to other women who have been exposed to chemicals in their youth: they will need even more care with their preconception diet in order to replenish and protect themselves.

EATING FOR TWO

Right off the bat we learn that Planck is alarmed by how much food she is asked to eat to satisfy most pregnancy dietary advice. With no increase in appetite, although with a great increase in fatigue, she becomes peevish and impatient with recommendations that seem overwhelming to her. Unfortunately, she has forgotten to heed her own advice to change her diet before becoming pregnant.

She reproduces the list of fats and proteins recommended by the WAPF that she typed up for herself and taped to her refrigerator. “Then I tried the diet,” she continues. “Impossible. I couldn’t even manage it for one full day.” The diet that has helped hundreds of mothers give birth to vibrantly healthy babies gets no more than one day’s effort. She doesn’t really like beef and lamb, and no matter how hard she tries, can’t find a way to use lard daily. And there was just too much food.

Turning next to Adelle Davis’s Let’s Have Healthy Children, Planck found the advice more to her liking: “Davis emphasized the elements you needed to build a baby: vitamins, protein, calcium. She suggested you fill in the rest, according to taste and hunger: fruit, brown rice, whole wheat toast, chocolate. (True, she never mentioned chocolate, but women who eat chocolate daily when they’re pregnant have babies who smile more.)”

Planck crankily tries to be the Good Eater: “For a few weeks, I dutifully ate liver twice a week. To make room for all the beef, chicken, fish, eggs, cheese, milk and butter, I reluctantly cut way back on dark chocolate (to a couple of squares), fresh fruit (from five or six pieces down to two or three), and homemade ice cream, now with a mere smidgen of honey or maple syrup. . . Still, I wasn’t happy. Meals were not a pleasure.”

It seems to me odd that Planck should be suffering alone with her mealtime quandaries—where was the baby’s father, or Planck’s mother or aunt or friends? How about some help from our local WAPF chapter? Especially in the days when all she wanted to do was sleep, couldn’t someone else provide tempting, nutrition-packed meals each day? Planck quotes Dr. Price, who wrote of tribal leaders in the Fiji Islands who assigned teenage boys the task of seeking special seafood daily for the expectant mothers to nourish their children. Pregnant women need support and nourishment from their “tribe.”

Instead, Planck plugs on alone and once again comes up with a simplified eating approach to the forty weeks of pregnancy, dividing the period into three “acts.” Each “act” involves the development of a different system of the baby’s organism, and Planck highlights the foods that are particularly necessary at those times: “As long as I was taking cod liver oil, I realized, I didn’t need to eat liver twice a week for vitamins A and D. As long as I had a little grass-fed butter oil…I didn’t need to worry if there was enough butter on my eggs. I could probably skip the extra lard altogether. (Hurrah!) When I took fish oil, I didn’t worry if I wasn’t hungry for salmon.” So Planck herself was not relying on milk for vitamins A and D. But she does not say which brand or how much—a critical omission.

BIRTH DAY

A home-born child herself, Planck naturally planned to deliver her own baby at home. However, after laboring without progress and in constant pain for twenty-four hours, Planck’s midwife calls off the homebirth and drives her to the backup hospital. The baby is in a difficult posterior position, and Planck’s labor remains stalled. Per routine hospital protocols, she is moved along the slow conveyor belt that ends in cesarean section. Those grueling hours in the hospital which finally result in the delivery of baby Julian are painful to read; Planck’s misery was complete.

Unsurprisingly, Planck finds herself weeping daily for a month after the birth. She insists some of this is normal as postnatal hormones readjust— in her own case she must also work the drugs out of her system, and add in a recovery period for major surgery along with her many emotions. While mentioning almost in passing that being well-fed can prevent “mild baby blues” she advises mothers whose depression is severe enough to interfere with caring for their babies that anti-depressant medication may be in order, even if they are breastfeeding. Wouldn’t additional cod liver oil, egg yolks and bone broths be a better solution?

Crushed that her hopes for a peaceful home delivery were dashed, Planck asks, “Why me? Why was my baby the one in this rare position, the one in need of rescue?” No one can presume to know the answer for certain, but we ought to remember that ease of childbirth was one of the key markers of reproductive health noted by Dr. Price in the healthy groups he studied. In the U.S. today, the cesarean rate is over 30 percent, and even higher in teaching hospitals. Without this rescue surgery, how many American mothers and infants simply would not survive the otherwise normal human function of birth?

NURSING

Planck introduces her chapter on breastfeeding with renewed energy and optimism—after a brief trial and error period while she and Julian get the hang of it, nursing is something she finds she does very well. Planck includes lots of information about the components of breast milk—she several times has her own milk tested for DHA content—so important for baby’s developing brain—and finds it consistently high. She includes an illuminating section on the difference between “cache or carry” mammals, which elegantly explains why human mothers and babies do best in close body contact day and night to facilitate the almost constant nursing helpless human babies require.

Detailed nursing techniques, a list of FAQs on breastfeeding, and troubleshooting advice are all sensible and useful. The difficult topic of what to do if you cannot nurse your baby introduces the pros and cons of wet-nurse as Planck’s first choice, human milk bank as second, and home made formula (WAPF’s milk and meat formulas are referenced) third, with powdered, low-iron milk formula as a distant fourth, when there is truly no other choice.

FIRST FOODS

For the most part, Planck uses a “real foods” approach to feeding baby Julian, and she relies on it again for moral support in her own clashes with the pediatrician over Julian’s weight, considered too low at one point, and iron levels, also considered low. The inclusion of these run-ins may be useful for new parents unaccustomed to challenging doctor-sanctioned standards of healthcare for their children, but low weight and low iron levels should be taken seriously as warning bells to make improvements in the diet.

For try as she may to prevent it, Planck allows sugar and white flour products to creep into Julian’s diet—with the inevitable tears from both when Julian demands bread, chocolate and crackers. Part of the difficulty no doubt comes from Planck’s frequent cross-country travel—starting when Julian is only three weeks old—and continuing regularly with him in tow on book tours. All that disruptive travel for an infant makes me wince, but I suppose I’m hopelessly anachronistic. “Hats off” to mothers who manage to travel with beef stew and raw milk for their children, she says, but admits she can’t pull it off.

I was rather surprised that even simpler conveniences for her child seemed too much bother: “Most books will tell you to purée meat in water, stock, or milk and spoon-feed your baby, which is dandy, but it seemed like a lot of work to me. Julian had meat on the bone or in chunks from the start.” The digestive capacities of a child take years to mature, and it is a great help and kindness to at least mince meat in tasty, digestion-enhancing bone broth for him.

Where Planck does become diehard about food selections is in her insistence on lots of fruit and vegetables every day. While giving credence to the superiority of fully ripe, locally grown, pesticide-free produce, she insists that it’s still better to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables every single day, regardless of their provenance. “If your fridge isn’t packed with fresh produce, you won’t have a couple of vegetables at every meal. I’d rather throw away old vegetables—and often do—than do without at supper time. The same goes with fruit. . . In deepest winter, when local produce is scarce and expensive here in New York City, I go directly to the greengrocer, head held high, to buy greens. I have no idea what the carbon footprint of these choices is. But I know the price and convenience calculation without thinking.”

I hate to say it, but if you do think about it, imported greens in winter are for the most part only exercise for your jaws and window dressing for your dinner plate. Most vegetables rapidly lose what uncertain nutrients they have starting minutes after they have been harvested, whether they are organic or not. They won’t gain anything aging in your refrigerator, either. Conventionally grown produce is little more than water, fiber and traces of pesticides and rocket fuel.

A family is more securely provisioned with a freezer full of raw June butter, liver and lard from autumn-harvested animals, and soup bones for the stock pot to last over the winter, and a pantry filled with raw cheese and lacto-fermented organic vegetables. These foods carry the nutrients of the sun-filled seasons to us in deepest winter, in more reliable form and denser concentration. I wish that Planck could have worked up some real passion insisting on plenty of these foods for pregnant women.

IN CONCLUSION

Real Food for Mother and Baby contains a good deal of useful, easily accessible information not often found in the usual pregnancy preparation books currently available. Unfortunately, by blithely simplifying that advice to meet modern-day circumstances, Planck’s program falsifies the message of Dr. Price, cannot claim to best nourish pregnant women or their children, and in fact shortchanges them of a diet rich in essential nutrients. The truth remains that there are truly no short cuts to this success; most modern couples today will need extra time and extra nutrition—and clear, accurate explanations—to best prepare for parenthood and ensure that their baby enjoys perfect physical form and optimal health. The stakes are very high and the message needs to be very clear and more serious.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Fall 2009.

About the Reviewer

[authorbio:czapp-katherine]

Comments (7)

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Surprised
written by Tania, Aug 01 2012

I too am suprised that this one got a thumbs down. It doesn't describe the 'ideal' diet, but it has great info for moms who know nothing about traditional foods. I am indebted to this book as I pulled it off the library shelf during my first pregnncy. It was the first time I had ever heard of any alternative diet to the SAD low fat soy filled diet promoted widely.

This book got me buying pastured eggs, grassfed beef, and making broth. It took me a while but now 1.5 years later I have read a lot more on WAP, and we are making great strides towards a traditional diet... but only b/c I first came across this book!

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written by lizi, Apr 17 2012

i agree with some of the other comments and also the author of the review. the review is a bit harsh and comes off elitist at times. i think that nina planck's real-world conversion to traditional foods echoes that of many of us. i know i did't go from low-fat yoplait and store bought salad dressings to WAPF type diet over night! it has been over 6 years since i first read nourishing traditions and i am still making baby steps in some areas (like organ meat), so i identify with the planck in that regard.
but i do agree with the review, that these shortcomings do have consequences in our child-bearing and nursing years. consequences that cannot always be shrugged off or cheerfully dismissed as planck seems to do when she's "given it her best shot". i don't think the review went too far in pointing to these dietary pitfalls as possibly leading to a c-section. it is obvious, and the reviewer did not have to draw that correlation. and as painful as it is for us to admit, in our culture where c-section rates are closer to 50%, it bears being questioned. why does a seemingly healthy woman still end up with a c-section? of course we may not always know, but sometimes there are factors that could certainly contribute.
i think there is still something positive to be said for the book, though. the transition to a WAPF style diet is staggering when you are starting from a SAD, or even the standard american "healthy" diet of low-fat, high carb, processed foods. but i have to agree with the reviewer that nina planck falls short of implementing the diet in many ways not only during her pregnancy but also in feeding her baby/toddler. to think of her travelling all over the place at the expense of her baby's critical stage of development and establishing eating habits that will last a lifetime boggles my mind and saddens me.
in that way, the author really does not embrace the slow WAPF lifestyle.
i really think we do need a more lay-friendly book to introduce WAPF to expecant parents or families, one that is not overwhelming, not totally hostile to vegetarianism, and easy to follow and make better food choices, even if it is baby steps at a time.

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written by Maria Elena, Sep 22 2010

For strong advocates of the Weston A. Price Diet, I can see how this book doesn't satisfy. However, I thought this book was an excellent resource! Like others have said, WAPF can be extremely overwhelming for the novice or typical American. Nina's approach is easy to understand and so accessible. I gave this book to my sister when she became pregnant and I think it helped her tremendously in improving her diet. Had I given her Nourishing Traditions she probably wouldn't have even read it. I love Nourishing Traditions and use it all the time, but it has definitely been a long road in getting me there and I thank Nina Plank for even getting me on that road. I think her books Real Food What to Eat and Why & Real Food for Mother and Baby are great introductions to WAPF, not to mention the latter is one of the only mother/ baby food books out there that addresses traditional diets.

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This is a fantastic book
written by Allison, Jul 30 2010

This is a great book in terms of information and readability. I don't like how reviewer Czapp points to author's Nina Planck's body and c-section birth as evidence of her nutrition advice being unsound. With this kind of flawed and hurtful reasoning, what would Czapp say about WAPF founder Sally Fallon's not being able to breastfeed successfully? Besides, Nina Planck later went on the have TWIN vaginal births and nursed successfully. Go Nina!

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I loved this book!
written by dandeliongirl, Jul 21 2010

Like Lorette, I too am shocked that this got a thumbs down review! I think this book is an excellent book for those transitioning from the typical American diet. I've given Nourishing Traditions to friends and they've been overwhelmed by it and found it to read like a textbook. Real Food for Mother and Baby was a breath of fresh air for me! I wholeheartedly support the Weston A. Price message but let's face it, it can be a very hard way to eat in our culture, especially if you can't afford pastured beef and raw cheeses! We have been able to change a LOT in our diet since reading Nourishing Traditions but it took one step at a time.
You have to remember what the effects of stress do on the body too. When I try to eat strictly by the WAPF guidelines I tend to get very stressed. So, I've done what I can and don't fret the rest. That's the kind of attitude that Nina Planck has cultivated too and I greatly appreciate that.
This review did seem rather mean-spirited and judgmental. Let's have a little grace for people and celebrate each small step that they're able to make for better health. Nina's book is a good book and I would recommend it to any pregnant mom! As they get used to eating 'real food' then they can be introduced to the more labor intensive WAP guidelines.

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written by Lorette C. Luzajic, Jun 19 2010

I'm shocked and surprised that this foundation gave a thumbs down to Nina Planck, despite all the reasons you mentioned. You can bet that Nina's cheerful assurances go a lot further to help "real" people transition to a healthier diet than detailed, confusing diatribes that even scientists can barely follow. There is not one SAD eater who will suddenly overnight adopt perfect nutrition and source every bite from the top farms. Intimidating sugar addicts or low fat advocates with "perfection" instead of reasonable change is not only unrealistic, but it does a disservice.

Vegans can and will and do have children. It's better for some to adopt some fish and meat, because NONE are going to "wait" many "years" to repair from the "nutritional wasteland." Babies are born all the time the world over into imperfect circumstances and not even the Weston A. Price foundation can change that.

I think this review was very meanspirited and elitist. The last thing Weston followers want is to become an elitist, disdainful cult like vegans, who spend all their time criticizing others who aren't vegetarian enough. Vegans exclude the imperfect and refuse differences of priority and judge others constantly with their bizarre sense of morality. We should be the opposite, a support system to procure more information, change, and real food.

Nina successfully brings better food to a wide audience, helping people adopt and grow new habits and thirst for new information. It's incredibly small to discredit a whole book of enthusiastic life-changing information over her years as a vegan or store bought milk. In fact, I've never had the pleasure of buying raw milk since the only place I can get it in my area is by a long drive in a car, and I don't believe in cars. In fact, I'm "team Paleo" and we don't believe in eating grains at all, but we don't shun either Sally Fallon or Nina Planck for encouraging whole grains soaked. After all, we don't want people without access or money for meat to starve to death. My diet is imperfect, but since finding Sally's cookbook the changes I've made have helped cure a whole host of autoimmune disorders, and I'm not going to obsess or cry over spilled milk.

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Thumbs up! (For the review!)
written by Joneen, Feb 28 2010

Excellent and thorough review, thank you!! I'm only sorry I didn't see this before I bought the book! However, at least I didn't waste the energy trying to read it yet though. I really appreciate how thorough you were, very in-depth. I really enjoyed her first book, and since I trusted her as an author, I picked up this second one without a thought. Guess I'll know better for next time. Thanks again!!

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