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I’m so excited to welcome Sally Fallon-Morell to the Fertility Friday Podcast today! Sally is the founding President of the Weston Price Foundation. She is a strong advocate of nutrition and is the leading spokesperson for a return to nutrient-dense diets including raw milk, animal fats, organ meats, bone broths and lacto-fermented foods. Sally is the author of the best-selling cookbook Nourishing Traditions and The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care among others.
One of the important takeaways from this interview and all of Sally’s work is that animal fats and cholesterol are vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease, and optimum energy levels. Sally has been working tirelessly for many years to raise awareness about the importance of nutrition in overall health, fertility, and how important a role that nutrition plays in having healthy babies and a healthy pregnancy. Listen in to learn about what traditional cultures do to ensure that their babies are healthy, and what foods will improve your fertility and help you to have a healthy, happy, thriving baby!
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Topics discussed in this episode
- Who is Dr. Weston Price, and how did he discover the importance of diet in overall health and fertility?
- How dental health is related to your overall health, and how it can be an important indicator of nutrient deficiencies
- Why all traditional cultures intentionally fed certain sacred fertility foods to men and women of childbearing age
- Why saturated fat is essential for fertility
- Why women who eat low-fat diets have been shown to have a harder time getting pregnant
- The silent epidemic of infertility that people aren’t really talking about, and the role that diet plays in this process
- Why a preconception diet is important to focus on for several months to a year or more before getting pregnant
- Why both Men and Women should be eating traditional fertility foods in preparation for pregnancy, not just women
- Why it’s important to shift the focus from getting pregnant to improving the health and nutrition of both partners before pregnancy so that the focus is on having healthy babies instead of just getting pregnant
- Why Sally recommends that mothers to stop taking hormonal contraceptives and eat a traditional fertility diet for at least 6 months to a year before even trying to conceive
- The impact of vegan and vegetarian diets on fertility, and why Sally recommends that women of child-bearing age steer clear of vegetarian/vegan diets at least until they are finished having children
- Why is raw milk safer than pasteurized milk?
- What foods are best to first introduce to your baby? It’s probably not what you think!
- The role that diet plays in not only the physical health of your baby but gut health and emotional health as well
- How the diet of the Mother impacts the quality of her breastmilk
- Why it’s never too late to start eating a healthy traditional diet
Connect with Sally!
You can connect with Sally on the Weston A Price Foundation website, on her own website New Trends Publishing, you can also connect with Sally on Facebook and Twitter.
Resources mentioned
- The Weston A Price Foundation
- New Trends Publishing | Sally Fallon Morell
- The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care by Sally Fallon Morell
- Nourishing Traditions Baby
- Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon Morell
- Weston A Price Foundation | Preconception Diet | Vitamins for Fetal Development: Conception to birth
- Weston A Price Foundation | Diet for Pregnant and Nursing Mothers
- The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care | Sally Fallon-Morell & Dr. Thomas Cowan
- Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon
- Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook by Katie Singer
- Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World by Sally Fallon
- Weston A Price Foundation | Healthy Baby Photo Gallery
- Weston A Price Foundation | Fertility Awareness | Child Spacing
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Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by Sirc of (The Nock)
Loved it!!!!
So glad you enjoyed the show!
Loved this! We are making grassfed bone broth available in the UK as this diet changed my life before, during and after my pregnancy. Bone broth is a miracle food for me.
So glad you enjoyed the show! Yes bone broth is amazing! It’s made a huge difference for me as well!
What was the prenatal vitamin that Sally suggested?
She didn’t suggest a particular brand of vitamin. Basically she recommends getting nutrients from food and taking cod liver oil. As for brands of cod liver oil you can try Green Pastures. Here are a few links: http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/faq-diet-in-pregnancy/ http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/vitamins-for-fetal-development-conception-to-birth/ http://www.greenpasture.org/public/Products/CodLiverOil/
Whenever I eat eggs adn most dairy products I have difficulty breathing and walllowing and then I get muscle pains all over my body within 24 hours. I have tried raw milk- cows and goats and these still seem to casue porblems. i have foudn two brands of sheeps cheese I seem able to tolerate provided that I always warm them first. But if I have them daily I start to get congested again.
I also get nauseated when I consume bone broth. I would liek to take a multi-vtiman- Are there any that are preferable? Should I force myself to eat things like eggs and put up with adverse reactions in the interests of improving fertility?
If you don’t tolerate eggs or dairy I definitely wouldn’t suggest eating them anyways. You could always try making raw milk kefir since that removes most of the lactose. Also you may want to look at the difference between A-1 and A-2 milk (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/07/09/the-devil-in-the-milk.aspx) otherwise try incorporating other aspects of the Weston Price diet such as bone broths, fermented foods, lard/tallow/coconut oil for cooking, organ meats, cod liver oil etc. I found success with raw milk (no reactions) and raw milk kefir but it doesn’t work for everyone.
Thanks for the advice Lisa and apologies for all the typing errors in my previous post!
This is brilliant. Only if this article could be posted everywhere for parents-to-be to see. It kills me that families still think bread, oatmeal, cereal, pastries, pancakes/waffles, spaghetti/macaroni, etc. are the norm for a healthy diet. People should really open their damn eyes. Great article, none-the-less. Thanks for the post.
Thanks so much Erin!
First off, I just want to say that you are the bomb and so is your podcast; it has been an amazing resource for me through my journey of trying to conceive.
While I found this episode very informative and helpful, I also found it rather judgy (on the guest’s part – not yours). My journey to pregnancy has not been an easy one (3 yrs total), and I tried for a very long time to conceive naturally. After over a year of trying unsuccessfully (while eating an overall very healthy diet), I decided to devote myself to restoring healthy cycles (I have PCOS with irregular cycles & had been already been off the pill for a few years). I threw myself in to following a fertility diet (which included Weston Price), yoga, meditation, abdominal massage, acupuncture, supplements (also saw a ND), Castor oil packs, the list goes on and on. But diet was the most essential component for me. Another year and a half later, after having a few normal cycles, they were back to excruciatingly long. And that is when I decided to move on to treatments, as I had exhausted every natural means and I was physically and emotionally exhausted. After a few failed cycles of medicated IUIs; in the end, we conceived with just the use of an ovulation drug (but upped to the highest dosage).
All of this to say (and I know I went in to far too much detail – sorry about that), I have a really hard time when people say that diet/lifestlye is what is keeping someone from getting pregnant. This makes people like me, who tried SO.freaking.hard to conceive through a healthy diet and lifestyle, feel pretty darn shitty. Sometimes, that is not all it takes. And to say that getting pregnant at a fertility clinic is obviously not the “right way” is extremely hurtful and disempowering. It is not just Sally I have heard this from; there have been guests or hosts from other holistic podcasts saying things of the same vein. And it makes my heart hurt for all those going through the pangs of infertility.
Again, I did find the interview overall helpful and I think you did a great job in your responses, especially when you brought up women who have already gone through pregnancy, etc. and might be feeling a pit in their stomach (thank you for that because I was feeling for those women). Just thought it might be helpful to have a different perspective. Sometimes medical intervention is just necessary and there is no shame in that. (These women often feel shameful enough as it is for their bodies failing them.)
Sorry for the novel – keep up the good work Lisa!
Thank you for sharing your perspective Megan. Yes I find that everyone I interview relays information in different ways. I hope the overall message was helpful. I do understand the complex nature of a discussion like this. What if you find all of this out after the fact? Does it mean you did everything “wrong” leading up to it? I definitely don’t look at life that way, because we all know what we know and we have to make the best decisions we can in the moment based on that.
I loved this episode and learned a lot! However, I was a little upset when she labeled children as “damaged.” I am a speech-language pathologist and work with many children with varying developmental delays, disorders, and diagnoses. I do not feel she was very compassionate with the wording she used, “So many of the children that are born are damaged.”
Just my two cents. I’m just starting to listen to your podcast, and I am really enjoying it!
Thank you :)?
I just started listening to your podcast (found you from being on Practically Zero Waste) and have really enjoyed learning about the FAM!
However, I hated this episode. I agree with Megan above, I found Sally extremely judgmental. Very her way is right, and that’s it. I would have loved a more open minded viewpoint. You can still relay information and share a new perspective without shaming those with another. Religion and/or moral beliefs could affect our mental health and therefore our bodies as much as diet. I have been a vegetarian for over 12 years and have been perfectly healthy. I don’t doubt that animal products have their benefits but they have their cons too. There isn’t anyone who follows this diet and has heart problems? Or another health issue? I just wished she could have said “yes, it would be hard to get xyz as opposed to eating cow liver which is so rich in it, but you’d just have to make sure you double up on your leafy greens” or something. There were never any alternative options or compromises.
I don’t need any recognition for this comment, and I really don’t want to hear a defense. I will still continue to support this podcast, just avoiding Sally and her association in the future. Hope to hear from more empathetic experts.
I really enjoyed this episode (discovered years after it aired). I find it fascinating that bear fat, organ meat, meat fat, butter, and egg yolks are so important! I grew up on a low-fat everything diet, drinking nonfat milk and low-fat cheese. It’s refreshing to hear that fat is good and healthy. Now if I can only convince my family! Thank you for interviewing her and doing an episode about this topic.
Raw unpasteurized kefir is safe during pregnancy? I am 12 weeks pregnant and stopped because of what I read online. I have been drinking raw milk. I wasn’t sure and concerned about consuming raw kefir. How much would be a good daily amount to consume?