When it comes to preparing for baby-making, a vegetarian diet for fertility has its challenges. This is especially so if you're vegan.
I have worked with countless vegan and vegetarian women in my practice who found their plant-based food choices were no longer adequate when they were trying to conceive or to maintain a healthy pregnancy and postpartum recovery.
It’s not to say it can’t be done, but extra care is needed to make sure you get it right.
While most criticism of a vegetarian diet is around whether you’re getting enough protein, in fact, protein is not usually the biggest worry since most health-conscious herbivores know they need to piece together enough protein from grains, beans, nuts, etc.
The bigger concern is getting enough healthy fat, cholesterol, and fat-soluble vitamins – especially D, A, and K2.
While it's commonly believed that they can be supplied from plant sources (vitamin A in carrots, zinc in grains, and fortified orange juice for vitamin D as examples) these nutrients are far more useful to the body from animal sources. For example, you'll find vitamin A in liver, zinc in oysters, and vitamin D from fermented cod liver oil and pastured lard.
If consuming animal foods for the sake of optimizing your fertility is off the table, then use these guidelines to maximize the benefits of your vegetarian diet:
10 ways to optimize a vegetarian diet for fertility & pregnancy
#1 – An ovo-lacto diet is the best vegetarian option if you are trying to optimize fertility or are pregnant or nursing. Dairy and eggs will provide you with essential fat, cholesterol, fat-soluble vitamins, and protein. Aim for at least two eggs per day and 4 cups of milk or equivalent dairy products – all should be from pasture-raised animals. If you are open to eating fish and/or other seafood, now’s the time to do so!
#2 – Get extra fat by consuming coconut (oil, cream, milk, and meat from coconuts), well-sourced palm oil, and avocados daily.
#3 – Properly prepare your grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts by souring, soaking or sprouting. This will ensure that your body has access to their full nutritional profile and that anti-nutrients do not block absorption of minerals from the rest of your food. Read more about properly preparing grains here.
#4 – Only consume fermented soy such as tempeh, miso, and unpasteurized soy sauce. Read more about the dangers of soy here.
#5 – Incorporate cultured foods including fermented vegetables, condiments, and drinks daily. Read why cultured foods are important here.
#6 – Get enough vitamin D. The best way to make sure you're getting enough vitamin D is to have your blood levels tested. The most effective way to get this essential, fat-soluble vitamin is with regular sun exposure. If 20 minutes per day on most of your skin without sunscreen is not a option, read more about getting vitamin D here.
#7 – Eat natto (fermented soy beans) or take a Vitamin K2 supplement. Ideally you will get vitamin K2 from dairy from grass fed cows. This little known nutrient is important for calcium distribution – an essential function when you're asking your body to grow a small human's teeth and bone. Read more about vitamin K2 here.
#8 – Vitamin A is essential for fetal growth and tissue maintenance and for supporting a mother's own metabolism. Since the conversion of beta-carotene to true vitamin A is often not adequate (source), those committed to a vegetarian diet may find themselves lacking in this important nutrient for baby making. Read about vitamin A toxicity here.
#9 – If you don't already, take a Vitamin B12 supplement. This nutrient is necessary to produce red blood cells and prevent anemia. Found almost exclusively in animal products, it is impossible to get enough B-12 on a vegan diet alone. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may go undetected in vegans because the vegan diet is rich in folate, which may mask deficiency in vitamin B-12 until severe problems occur.
#10 – Take an omega-3 supplement. If you are willing to do a fermented cod liver oil supplement, it will provide you with omega-3’s, plus fat soluble vitamins D and A that you cannot get from plant sources. The best vegan option is from microalgae which can provide all three essential fatty acids (DHA, EPA, and ALA). Source
Other vegetarian options for omega 3′s include flax, hemp, walnut and algae. These sources contain the fatty acid ALA which ideally can convert to DHA and EPA, however studies show that the human body does not convert ALA to EPA and DHA well. (source)
Unless you're extremely deficient, it's possible that once pregnant, your baby will get all of the nutrients he or she needs regardless of what you eat – BUT if you're not consuming the right foods, the placenta will demand calcium from your bones, fatty acids from your brain, and other nutrients it needs from YOUR body, leaving you feeling less than wonderful as your baby grows and after baby is born.
So follow these steps above to optimize your vegetarian diet for fertility, pregnancy and beyond for the health of your child and yourself.
How your lifestyle may be inhibiting your ability to conceive – and what to do about it
“extra care is needed to make sure you get it right.”
Absolutely not a correct statement. CARE needs to be given to what we eat no matter what our diet choices are. You 100% can not say (I mean, you CAN say it, it’s just not true at all from my perspective) that an ovo lacto diet is the best option over a vegan option, because it is simply not true. No matter what guidelines we choose for ourselves, there are specific requirements/building blocks that are needed. Your entire article implies that vegans and vegetarians are lacking. If we are eating HEALTHY and NOURISHING foods then we will get what we need for ourselves and our babies. Even those that eat an omni diet need to do this. All of the suggestions you give are things that someone eating an omni diet should also be doing.
I am really just very turned off by the attitude you are giving off — in all honesty, it sounds and feels very hostile toward vegans, vegetarians, and mothers.
The simple answer to your headline question is “YES, it can be. As long as you are eating a well balanced diet.”
I want to add, the information you give is valid for all diets, and it is good info to have. It’s your attitude toward veg that I’m finding offensive here and as much as I want to embrace what you are saying, I am just too turned off to listen.
I am vegan and nursing and I truly felt condescended to while reading this article.
I disagree Grace. I think she had a helpful tone and didn’t intend to sound condescending. I am a vegetarian and have read many blog posts that outright say that you shouldn’t conceive as a vegan or vegetarian. This is not one of them. I didn’t see this post as condemning vegetarians in any way.
I thought this article was a good way of letting people know that some vitamins and minerals may be harder to get by eating a vegetarian diet, and to take care to find a way to get them. I think the same would be true for eating a Paleo diet, maybe you would need to take extra care to get enough carbohydrates in order to maintain a healthy metabolism function.
I think that a large amount of the other blog posts on this blog address omnivores and suggestions for eating a nourishing diet, so just because one of them addresses vegetarians is no reason to assume that she is picking on vegetarians. Clearly she sees a lot of vegetarian women in her practice with the same nutritional deficiencies, so this blog post will help similar women who may need to start a supplementation routine.
oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the tone i perceived was intentional at all. It’s just how I see non-veg folks talk about veg folks on a regular basis. I don’t think she was trying to attack anyone or anything like that. Far from it — in sincerely believe she’s trying to be helpful.
Hi Grace, This is true, but someone eating even the healthiest of vegan diets will be missing some of these key nutrients, so in my opinion and professional experience those adhering to a plant-based diet DO need to take extra care to get the necessary nutrition.
I see how you could consider this article to be hostile to veganISM and vegetarianISM (but not vegans or vegetarians, at all).
I also don’t see how anything in that article could possibly be conceived as being hostile to mothers. You went too far, into the realm of hysteria or deliberate dishonesty, when you took it there.
Don’t forget magnesium.
I conceived after having been a vegan for seven years. It took me a year of trying at age 29. I was not properly preparing my nuts, seeds and grains. I ate a lot of soy and drank soy milk. I took no supplements but a folic acid supplement which was likely completely unnecessary due to me diet. I should have been taking a b12 but I thought spirulina and nutrtitional yeast had me covered there. I thought I had it all figured out. Had terrible morning sickness and could eat and every smell made me gag. Had to walk around with a peppermint oil hankie for blocking out the smelly world. I ended up eating big bites of cottage cheese after seven years of hardcore vegan living. That was the beginning. It took me years to get over it.
Fast forward to two months after delivery. Ulcerative Colitis struck me hard. Uncurable autoimmune disease. I think it was because my healthy baby took what I had left for myself. I got the MMR vaccine upon discharge from the hospital after delivery and perhaps if I hadn’t had nutritional deficiencies and hadn’t just had a baby and chose not to take ibuprofen 800 as directed my bowel could have fended off that measles virus. They list UC as a side effect from the MMR now. FYI. Be careful vegans. I wish I had known the possibility of leaky gut and dysbiosis. I thought being vegan was the key to health.
You are so right, veganism in and of itself isn’t inherently nourishing! I once lived on Snapple and bean burritos from Taco Bell! I was vegan, but I provided myself with little to no nourishment. No matter what choices we make about our diet, we all still need to take care with what we eat if we want to provide our bodies with everything we need for optimal health.
I was so defensive about my diet then and I read so many books and could out argue anyone who pushed me about it. I wasn’t just eating crap. I was a personal chef and very very very into food and cooking. Just to clarify. I just don’t want any vegans reading this to think I wasn’t “doing it right”. There were lots that I wasn’t doing right but not according to the vegan manuals. I still got sick. I am just thankful my babies are okay. I think youth carried me through all that and once I used that up creating a life, I left my gut vulnerable. For a long time, I thought this happened to me because I stopped being vegan and kept trying to go back. But having ulcerative colitis made that impossible. Thank goodness I found the work of Dr. Campbell-McBride. I almost wrote her off because she seemed so anti-vegan. And everything she said about animal fat just turned me way off but I was desperate so I tried it and it worked.
Oh, brother, Grace:
People infer what offense they perceive because of their own issues, not from reading a benign, informative post. Obviously everyone should be doing this, especially if you want to conceive, have a baby growing, post birth and recovery, and in general. But she was speaking to this specific segment of the population, and many are newly vegan or uniformed vegans that may fill their body with Jack in the Box French fries but not a hamburgers because they are vegetarian.
Since you are a seasoned V, maybe she wasn’t telling you anything that you didn’t already know. I am not vegan or vegetarian at all, but I read it, taking from it what I can do to optimize my baby making capabilities to ensure good health.
My only complaint is that this article is titled “how to optimize a vegetarian diet for fertility”, and yet several of the options are not vegetarian at all. Eating fish or adding cod liver oil are not “optimizations” for a vegetarian diet. Anyone who consumes fish or fish oil is not a vegetarian anymore. Their vegetarian diet is not opimized, it is completely substituted for an omnivorous diet.
i hear you.
thanks for the feedback on my comment ladies!
I must be honest, i was in a terrible mood (and was in turn more sensitive than normal) when I posted it and I generally take a moment to rethink my thoughts before putting them out there into the world when I have such a strong negative response to something. I did not do that.
I stand my my opinion that the idea that vegans need to take “extra special” care is not a positive one. AND, I most definitely see the validity in the information given — it’s why I keep coming back to this site time and time again!
Grace,
Most people that I know who have been vegan or vegetarian do it because they believed it was best for their health. Of course every diet has potential problems if care is not taken to keep things in balance. But if people think just avoiding animal products is the magic ticket they can do severe damage to themselves and their children. Studies have been done where the children ended up with severe developmental disabilities because it was believed vegan was the way to go, but some vital information was missing. It was specifically the macrobiotic diet. I wish I could provide a link to the study, but I think it was in Sweeden or Denmark or something. I am completely shocked at your negative perception of this post. I would think you of all people would appreciate it for being open minded enough to support your way of eating. I do not understand why talking about the important points of a diet makes it “negative”. Especially when so many people start eating this way and have no clue what they are doing. If more people read posts like this before making the decision to go vegan, perhaps people would see more benefit and avoid the pitfals and stick with it. Hiding from the truth makes it dangerous.
In the article above you mentioned “#4 – Only consume fermented soy such as tempeh, miso, and unfermented soy sauce. Read more about the dangers of soy here.”
Why did you say only consume fermented soy and then list “unfermented soy sauce”? Can you advise on soy sauce that is ok to consume and if there are any you know of that are also wheat free?
Thank you.
I found that interesting too.
I’d say stay away from any soy unless it is gmo free/organic! Fermented gmo free/organic is best 😉
That *had* to be a typo.
Good eye, Katie! That should have been unpasteurized soy sauce… I’ve changed it – thank you! Oh, and organic tamari is a good wheat free substitution for soy sauce. I haven’t found one that is unpasteurized, but this one is really high quality: http://holisticsquid.com/Tamari
Check out nama shoyu – raw, fermented, unpasteurized soy sauce.
The question of vitamin A is a tough one. I guess vegetarian vitamin A tablets would be taken from beta-carotene? so I don’t see the benefit of supplementing from vegetarian sources if there is already plenty of beta-carotene in the diet, and if a person is going to depart from vegetarianism during pregnancy to take fish oil omega 3 then it seems unnecessary to supplement with vitamin A in addition. But I’m not an expert!
Humans never evolved to live off plant diet entirely. If you are not feeling it now, that’s because you still have the resources to spare, but your child does not. The foundation for one’s health is built in the expectancy and early childhood. Once it is laid, there is no way to rebuild it! Veganism is an ethical choice and has nothing to do with health. Adult vegan females certainly have the right to follow their beliefs and eat whatever they want, but once a mother, they should accept the responsibilty for bringing another person into this world. It pains me to see all these weak and malnourished vegan children and their selfish mothers oblivious to the reality and taking advantage of their own offsprings. Experiment on yourself, not your children. Build a healthy person and let them DECIDE when they are grown enough to make their own decisions.
One look at some of the gorgeous albeit very ambitious wild
Brown Trout that also live in the waters off Cabo
fish aquarium on Wednesday.
Hi Emily!
Thank you for this great post, and for such a great useful practical blog. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve recently been relly contemplating the whole “eating of meat” since my husband has been vegetarian since birth, and me an omnivore save 5 years recently. I had to switch back to eating meat due to health concerns.
I recently published a post with regards to the whole Omnivore versus Vegetarian dilemna, and hope you enjoy it!
http://hcombcottage.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/why-i-eat-meat/
Much love,
Oriana
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Hey Grace! Wow you have a lot of comments on this post! Anyway I was a vegan when I was trying to conceive with my youngest and I a hell of a time! Ron Garner, the author of Conscious Health recommended that I start taking cod liver oil so I did. I got pregnant that month. I don’t know if it was the worrying about “will my baby be getting enough?” on this vegan diet of mine or what but I got pregnant that month after Ron’s advice. I am no longer a vegan only because I think unpasteurized honey has so many benefits and it is super alkalizing! Also I feel as though so many woman (and men) are deficient in Vitamin B12 so I now eat meat once or twice a month.
Also to get tons of nutrients during pregnancy I took Spirunlina, Chlorella, took Vitamin D3 drops, ate hemp seed, drank lemon water each morning (and stil do). I used chia seeds and celtic sea salt to top off all my dinners. The only oil I used for cooking and baking was coconut oil. I never touched dairy and went gluten-free 3 months into my pregnancy. I ate fruit every morning and had a large salad with dinner every night. I maybe touched refined sugar once or twice but other then that I was strict and I never got morning sickness. I thrived the whole pregnancy and had an amazing home water birth that was quick and…. I want to say easy but lets be honest here…. And my daughter is a bright eyed, healthy, happy baby girl who has never had dairy or refined sugar in her life. We didn’t give her the vitamin K shot or the antibiotic eye cream, or the hep B vaccine at birth. She took Vitamin K orally three times.
She is now 1 and a half and I write about her natural life on my health page Mandys Healthy Life.com (if you want to check it out). She’s had a cold twice in her life so far. The first one lasted 2 days and the second cold lasted one day. Her immune system is thriving, all because of the hard work I put in during pregnancy, AND after birth! I am still breastfeeding 3-5 times a day. I believe that if you eat a strict healthy WHOLE FOODS diet and stick it out through the cravings of junk foods and pop, that you’ll honestly benefit from a healthy baby in the end. It’s all worth it!
A book that will change your life is The Disease-Free Revolution by Ron Garner!!