I just finished listening to an interview with Sally Fallon Morell about how to have a healthy baby. If you are my age (haha) your mother probably read Dr. Spock’s baby book that sold 50 million copies. He had some good recommendations — except for the nutrition. His ideas on what to feed babies was a reflection of the infatuation with the processed foods of the times and has played a part in the epidemic of infertility and children with serious health and learning problems.
How To Ensure A Healthy Baby
Possibly the most important aspect of preparing for pregnancy are the fat soluble vitamins. These critical nutrients were eaten on the order of ten times more in the healthy cultures that Dr. Weston Price found on his travels. Individuals of childbearing years were given sacred foods that contained huge amounts of these important nutrients.
The Importance of Fat Soluble Activators
Dr. Price found that a common denominator amongst all the cultures he visited, was that they all had sacred foods that were specifically given to pregnant women and children. They also had a special diet for young couples that would soon have children. In this way they were able to do everything possible to ensure a healthy pregnancy, easy childbirth and a healthy baby.
These revered foods are rich in minerals and extremely high in what Dr, Price called fat soluble activators. Minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and iodine are important nutrients. These minerals have many necessary functions towards supporting optimal physical development. Dr. Price did not fully understand what these critical nutrients were when he first began his work. Recent science has uncovered the fact that these activators are actually the animal forms of vitamins A (retinol isomers), D (vitamin D3 and isomers) and K (vitamin K2).
In her writings and lecture, Sally likes to use the analogy of bricks and mortar,
If we compare the body to a house built of bricks and mortar, think of the minerals as the bricks and fat-soluble activators as the mortar. In other words, we can consume a certain diet of fantastically nutrient-dense foods, but the value of such a diet comes down to what is actually absorbed. Without fat-soluble activator nutrients— namely vitamins A, D3, and K2—our efforts to consume the “right” foods will be futile.
The work of Dr. Weston Price has clearly shown us that ancestral diets had these fat soluble mineral activators in the order of ten times the amounts we get from our diet today. Without this mortar all the minerals are lost or deposited in the soft tissues where they do not belong. For example, calcium deposits in the joints, in the kidneys as stones, in the heart vessels as atherosclerotic plaques.
Why Do Pregnant Women Have Food Cravings
Sally talked about why pregnant women have food cravings. It turns out, the body, in it’s infinite wisdom will create these cravings out of a need for the nutrients in the food. For example, the craving for ice cream is clearly a need for the fat in the cream. Everyone — especially those preparing for pregnancy or pregnant — needs the full fat in milk, cream and butter and other animal products.
How To Deal With Morning Sickness
According to Fallon Morell, morning sickness is actually a need for cholesterol. It makes sense. In the early weeks of pregnancy, the body is furiously making hormones. The basis of ALL sex hormones is cholesterol. It is possible to become deficient in cholesterol at that point.
Sally says that actually eating egg yolks and other good sources of cholesterol like cream, would be a good way to prevent morning sickness.
Get Sally’s book, The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care here.
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