When you are trying to conceive, it’s especially important to nourish your body with Real Food to optimize fertility and stock your body with the materials it needs to make a healthy baby. While this sounds logical, you may be surprised by some of the suggestions below.
These nutrient-dense foods offer an abundance of fat-soluble vitamins, antioxidants, minerals and wholesome fats in six main categories: seafood, liver, full fat dairy, eggs, animal/coconut fats and bone broth. It is essential to source these foods from good quality sources including pasture raised animals, sustainably harvested fish, and organic, preferably unpasteurized dairy.
- Oysters on the half shell
- Butter on everything
- Liver and onions
- Caviar
- Sushi with extra masago, tobiko, and ikura
- Fermented cod liver oil with high vitamin butter oil
- Bone broth
- Homemade whipped cream
- Pastured eggs scrambled with cream or fried in butter
- Salmon with cream sauce
- Clams with drawn butter
- Mussels in their own broth
- Pate and Cheese Plate
- Fried chicken liver
- Foie gras
- Milk shakes made with egg yolk and cream
- Ice cream made with egg yolks and cream
- Homemade mayonnaise
- Clam chowder-made with lots of cream
- Cream of ___ soup
- Cheese fondue
- Taramasalata (greek dip made with carp roe)
- Caesar salad with extra dressing (egg yolk, anchovies)
- Fried Sardines
- Bacon
- Veggies sauteed in bacon grease
- Full fat yogurt
- Cheese burgers (Grass fed beef with ground liver mixed in)
- Spaghetti bolognese (Use grass fed beef and add ground liver and heart)
- Coconut oil, cream, butter
- Roasted potatoes in duck fat
- Flan or custard
- Homemade ranch dressing (mayo, buttermilk, creme fraiche)
- Meatloaf with hidden ground liver and heart
- Cured salmon with creme fraiche
- Fish pie (with oily fish and lots of cream)
- Popcorn slathered with ghee or butter
- Mixed of Seafood Paella
- Bouillabaisse
- Braunschweiger
For more information on eating Real, Nutrient Dense Food for optimal fertility, pregnancy and birth, and the healthiest child possible, read this post on the alternative to prenatal vitamins and check out the awesome Beautiful Babies E-Course by Food Renegade. Bon Apetit!
This post is part of Real Food Forager’s Fat Tuesday blog carnival.
Yum! My mouth was utterly salivating as I read the list. These are all foods I have been craving. I think my body is telling me something.
#8,16,17,25,26,27 are definitely my favorites
That is my dream list. Yum.
do you really promote the process foie gras? forced feeding a duck by sticking a pipe down his esophagus doesn’t sound too humane to me.
Hi Kirsten – How about humane fois gras? http://www.cheeseslave.com/chef-dan-barber-brings-sustainable-humane-foie-gras-to-america/
Reading this list makes me hungry! Love it!
Alcoholics crave alcohol, addicts crave a fix…. Just because we crave something does not mean it is what our bodies need at all…. I have gone through two pregnancies, and am well experienced in the infertility world. As a vegan, I am appalled by this list. There are plant based ways to approach infertility, which have been used for thousands of years, when creme fraiche want around…. DO more research before you jump to this high fat, high cholesterol diet which will contribute greatly to atherosclerosis….
Hi Sarah – I understand that the ideas that you may find in this post and on my site do not fit in with the norm of modern nutritional beliefs. It is my belief that diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol is actually an ideal choice that promotes fertility and other aspects of optimal health. This is the way humans have thrived throughout human history, and there is no successful society that have thrived in multiple generations on a vegan diet. For more information on traditional diets: http://www.westonaprice.org/about-the-foundation/vegetarian-tour
I love when vegans come onto site like this, where we all live by the WAPF principles, and spew their venom at us like we are evil. They always seem to be such a hostile group. Its probably because their brain is needing some fat!!
Disa, I disagree with what Sarah said. I believe when our body is craving something it is because we need it. I never ate a tomato in my life. I thought they were gross. But when I got pregnant, I craved them. Couldn’t get enough of them! I am now a tomato lover.
For someone to compare the cravings of nutritionally packed foods to an alcoholic craving alcohol is just stupid and irrational. Again, I think someone’s brain is craving some saturated fat!
Oh my, that list makes me want to have more children. We had difficultiy conciving. I wish I had the correct information about food and nutrition when we were trying. We would have ate so well and probably cut our time substantially.
We adopted and then got pregnant. The first child was about a year old and I was cooking a lot with butter for him and found I loved the taste. We also went to a Tibetan party just before I got pregnant. The whole meal was filled with meat and fat it was wonderful and I was pregnant the next week.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Michelle. I’ve never had Tibetan food, but would love to try it!
I too didn’t eat the greatest when I was TTC (I thought I was eating perfectly healthy, but you know how that goes!). Looking forward we can continue to eat a nutrient dense (absolutely delicious) diet for our own optimal health, and feed our children the best food possible so they can have the best foundation possible.
I am so confused by this. I have struggled with infertility for 7 years. I have one healthy daughter and two miscarriages. Every fertility appointment begins with weighing me and lectures on my weight and consuming a low fat diet so I can conceive. I struggle constantly with my weight, how could I ever eat this and maintain a healthy weight?
Hi Jill – I understand the frustration. On one end you’re hearing that a low-fat diet it the way to be healthy and conceive, and then here you see this list of ‘fertility foods’ laden with fat and cholesterol. Without knowing the details of your case, I can still say that if you truly would benefit from losing weight in order to conceive, a low fat diet is not the way forward. I would focus on a diet of real food – nothing processed at all – including reduced fat milk and other dairy products. Eliminate sugar, and reduce your intake of starchy foods. Do not cut out fats, such as the foods you see on this list. Fat will not make you fat, but it will give you the nutrients your body needs to grow a healthy baby to term. Wishing you the best…
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This is a really great list for most people but with pcos this would kill me, meat products, even the freshest, local, pasture raised meat and dairy products contain animal hormones, which i already have too much of my own, and sends my symptoms into over drive, but i would pick this stuff over franken food any day!
I’m a pediatrician and I can vouch for the fact that eating fat does not necessarily make a person fat. If someone eats too much of anything they will become obese. I could see someone reading this site believing that they should just keep eating more of these foods even when they do not feel hungry. That said, most people do not have a deficiency of fat soluble vitamins with the exception of Vitamin D. This requires more time spent in the sunlight, preferably for at least 15 minutes a day WITHOUT sunscreen.
On the other hand, PLEASE do not use unpasteurized dairy products!!!! Prior to the advent of pasteurization thousands of babies every year died of infection with listeria. Since widespread pasteurization began, this infection is almost unheard of. Pasteurization does not add any foreign chemicals, it only kills bacteria.
Hi Benjamin – Thanks for your comment. The Standard American diet is actually replete of fat soluble vitamins – so where do you imagine that vitamin A and K2 are coming from in the diet? Certainly not from carrots (which provides beta-carotene, not vitamin A) and margarine (a fake and toxic fat).
Also, your opinions about pasteurized milk are flatly wrong. Prior to pasteurization, listeria was a problem when raw milk was coming from unsanitary dairy practices. When from grass-fed cows and clean dairies, raw milk is far more safe and nutritious than pasteurized milk.
In New Mexico we had a small diary, where the raw milk was safe. Safety depends on the care the animals are given and the cleanliness of there enviroment. My baby and myself grew up on raw milk. Here in the midwest it is illegal and difficult to buy in raw form…too bad. Europeans hate our overly processed cheese that lacks bacteria.
Waw this is a beautiful list! I am french and it looks all like traditional ingredients for french recipes!
The top photo of this post – which is in your most popular posts section of the sidebar – is becoming a real issue for me. Daniel and I recently found a very affordable source for oysters, so stopping by to grab an article now means seeing the pic, heading to my fridge and shucking oysters, and very possibly forgetting what I came for in the first place. Mmmm . . . oysters.
Hahaha! Thanks for the mid-day chuckle, Heather! You are so lucky to have oysters on demand in your fridge!
Great list! Presumably if these things help with fertility then they will also help with conditions that are induced or exacerbated by hormonal issues, such as Endometriosis?
Do you have a recipe for the milkshakes?
I love this list! I’ve been traveling the “real food” path for a couple years now but I am fairly new to the nutrient-dense “nourishing” foods, so please excuse my ignorance, what exactly is cream? I know is what floats to the top of raw milk but I mean how will I find it at the store? I’ve never seen anything label as just “cream” thanks!
Thanks for the list. Some really cool foods that can definitely help with fertility.
I LOVE your site. Love it. I’ve been reading and pinning things like crazy. I have grass-fed/finished beef liver in my freezer that I’m just determined to sneak into all our food.
Can I just tell you how much I love you for saying popcorn?!? Ha! Popcorn is a comfort food for me and my kids. I pop it on the stove in coconut oil, put kerrygold butter and celtic sea salt on it andwe eat it with relish. I was feeling guilty for how much I loved popcorn like this since it’s technically a grain, so thank you for alleviating my guilt! Ha!
Also, thank you for all of the practical information about nutrition, lifestyle, and holistic health. Thanks for being willing to share your wealth of experience with us!