If you’re trying to get pregnant, consider laying off the fries and Big Mac. New research suggests what women eat as they’re trying to conceive affects how long it will take them to get pregnant.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Research Institute in Australia found that women who consumed more fast food (i.e. burgers, pizza, fried chicken and chips from take-out or fast-food eateries) and less fruit took longer to get pregnant and had a smaller likelihood of getting pregnant within a year. Findings were published on May 4 in the journal Human Reproduction.
It took women half a month longer to conceive when they ate fruit less than one to three times a month compared to those who, in the month prior to conception, ate fruit three or more times every day. Women who ate fast food four or more times each week didn’t get pregnant for almost a month longer than people who ate zero or limited fast food every week.
The research is based on midwives’ interviews of nearly 5,600 women from Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and Ireland, conducted during their first prenatal visit. None of the women had a baby before. Midwives gathered dietary details from participating women, plus information regarding how long conception took.
Overall, 8 percent of couples were labeled infertile for the purposes of the study, meaning it took them more than a year to conceive. Thirty-nine percent of couples took just a month to conceive. Women who ate the least amount of fruit increased their infertility risk from 8 percent to 12 percent. Consuming fast food four or more times each week caused the risk of infertility to jump from 8 to 16 percent.
However, the study had limitations; for example, diet data collection was based on recall and only related to certain foods, and the father’s dietary stats were not included in the research. What’s more, fast foods purchased in supermarkets were not a part of the data, meaning fast-food consumption could have been higher than reported.
“For any dietary intake assessment, one needs to use some caution regarding whether participant recall is an accurate reflection of dietary intake,” lead study author and post-doctoral University of Adelaide research fellow Jessica Grieger said in a statement. “However, given that many women do not change their diet from pre-pregnancy to during pregnancy, we believe that the women’s recall of their diet one month prior to pregnancy is likely to be reasonably accurate.”
Grieger added that researchers took note of pre-pregnancy dietary habits “to take account of several factors known to increase the risk of infertility, including elevated body mass index [BMI] and maternal age, smoking and alcohol intake.”
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Study: Women Who Eat Fast Food Face Longer Time Getting Pregnant originally appeared on usnews.com
