Kimberly Wong, RD, LDN

Spring, in unbroken tradition, has long been a celebration of the fertility of the earth. Similarly, this glowing season marks a time of renewal and revitalization in one’s fertility journey. Thus, in new hope and anticipation, what better way to welcome the coming months than by improving your fertile body with the natural nutrients of Mother Nature.

While it seems like the path to parenthood may at time be paved with difficult words upon deeply scientific concepts, the movement for local foods, dubbed with the endearing, folksy name “locavorism,” is much less esoteric and was spawned in the mid-2000s in an effort to promote sustainability and eco-consciousness.

Fertility vocab 101: locavore, (\ˈlō-kə-ˌvȯr\, noun), one who eats foods grown locally whenever possible.

Repeat. Memorize. Embrace.

Here’s the 411 on why becoming a locavore can aid in optimizing your preconception nutrition status. In short, locally farmed foods a) provide more vitamins and minerals per serving than do their grocery store counterparts b) encourage increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and c) frequently boast a pesticide-free label.

Local foods travel far fewer miles than your average megastore produce. While it seems convenient to run to the corner store and buy a pint of strawberries to meet our daily quota for our 9-A-Day, what we end up with in hand is quite the reverse of nutritious and fresh. In fact, a food is only considered local if it is grown within 100 miles of where it is sold. Conversely, the average carrot will travel 1,838 miles from farm to table.

While this particular carrot travels the rough equivalent of DC to Mexico City, greater than 50% and up to 90% of its vitamin C content will be lost within the first day of travel. Other essential nutrients fall prey to time-, temperature-, and light-sensitivity: the vital B vitamins, particularly folate, and vitamin E. These particular nutrients are all antioxidants that not only protect from an array of disease, but also help prevent harmful oxidative stress that has been linked to both male and female infertility.

Next, shopping for local foods is a calming, rewarding, and positive experience. Sifting through the wagons of crisp kale, chatting with its grower, and breathing fresh air may be considered so pleasurable that it increases the frequency of fresh fruits and vegetables, and grass-fed/cage-free proteins in one’s diet. Even without a drastic increase in servings per day, the mere substitution of local foods decrease the amount of commercialized foods in the diet. This, in turn, essentially cuts back the amount of processed foods, refined carbohydrates, saturated fats and preservatives in the diet. Just think—a mere trip to a local market can bring you one step closer to an anti-inflammatory, lower-glycemic, fertility-friendly diet!

Finally, local foods tend to offer pesticide-free and organic varieties. The upside to directly dealing with the foods’ producer ensures the elimination of any confusion. Pesticide-residues on fruits and vegetables and hormone/antibiotic-residues in meats and their by-products are of concern to fertility because of the accumulation of such toxins has been linked to reproductive damage.  

The Environmental Working Group has developed the infamous “Dirty Dozen,” which notes the foods that are likely to be highest in pesticide residuals. Do try to buy these foods organic and locally when possible. Conversely, they have released the “Cleanest Twelve” which indicates the produce lowest in pesticides.

Words of caution: the label “organic” does not mean that the produce was grown locally. While it may lack harmful toxic chemicals, it may have travelled several days to arrive to your location and thus also lacking in vital nutrients.

Although the warm summer-like weather donned upon us this year with as much surprise as our back-to-back blizzards, take this opportunity to explore new grounds in your fertility journey and tune into your inner locavore and enjoy the one predictable mainstay this spring: the flood of fertility-friendly, nutrient-rich produce into our fresh markets.

Check out http://www.rawdc.org/dc/fruitDC.html, an excellent online resource with more details and links to local farmers’ markets, CSAs, and organic retailers scattered across Northern Virginia, Washington, DC, and Maryland. For nationwide information, check out http://www.localharvest.org/.

Click here to schedule a fertility nutrition consultation with Kimberly Wong at Pulling Down the Moon in Rockville.  For more information about nutrition counseling visit our website at www.pullingdownthemoon.com.

By Breea Johnson, MS RD LDN

Fish oil with Omega-3s (that supply DHA and EPA) are a class of supplements commonly recommended for women with infertility. While nutritionists stress the importance of quality when choosing supplements, many people buy fish oil from their local store for convenience or to save money. This past week a lawsuit was filed in California against fish oil manufacturers [CVS Pharmacy Inc.; General Nutrition Corp. (GNC); Now Health Group Inc.; Omega Protein Inc.; Pharmavite LLC (Nature Made brand); Rite Aid Corp.; Solgar Inc., and TwinLab Corp]. The lawsuit charges that these companies sold fish oil that contained “undisclosed and unnecessarily high levels of contamination with polycholorinated biphenyl (PCB) compounds.”

What are PCBs? PCBs are a class of chemicals that are now illegal. However, they were utilized for many different purposes in industrial manufacturing – such as in coolants, PVC piping, pesticides and paints among other things. They are now considered one of the POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants), a group of the most toxic compounds that still exist in our food and bodies despite being outlawed years ago. According to the EPA, PCBs have been shown to cause cancer in animals, and negatively affect the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system, and endocrine system, amongst other ill health effects. Here is an excerpt from the EPA’s website about the effect of PCBs on reproduction in animals and humans:

“PCB exposures were found to reduce the birth weight, conception rates and live birth rates of monkeys and other species and PCB exposure reduced sperm counts in rats. Effects in monkeys were long-lasting and were observed long after the dosing with PCBs occurred.

Studies of reproductive effects have also been carried out in human populations exposed to PCBs. Children born to women who worked with PCBs in factories showed decreased birth weight and a significant decrease in gestational age with increasing exposures to PCBs. Studies in fishing populations believed to have high exposures to PCBs also suggest similar decreases. This same effect was seen in multiple species of animals exposed to PCBs, and suggests that reproductive effects may be important in humans following exposures to PCBs.”

According to the Environmental Working Group, one of the highest food sources of PCBs include farm-raised (or Atlantic Salmon), with 16 times the amount of PCBs as wild salmon. Thus, supplementing your diet with a fish oil that contains PCBs or eating farm-raised salmon to obtain omega-3s may do more harm than good. It’s important to know where your supplements (and food) are sourced from, and how the companies treat and process it to form a supplement. There are many companies that sell high-quality fish oil. Read more about the quality of our fish oil here. Please consult with a Pulling Down the Moon nutritionist if you have more questions concerning this matter.

For more information:

www.fishoilsafety.com

www.ewg.org