EATING FAST FOOD LINKED TO INFERTILITY
Lisa Rapaport reported on a study conducted by the Robinson Research Institute and the University of Adelaide in Australia
that showed the eating fast-food 4 times a week double the rate of infertility in women from 8% to 16%. Nothing to sneeze at, particularly given the difficulty that some women have at getting pregnant in the first place due to age and factors besides diet. So fast-food doesn't make women infertile the report will claim; it simply means that eating junk food may cause a delay with some woman in getting pregnant.
Compared to women who generally avoided fast food, women who indulged four or more times a week before they conceived took almost a month longer to become pregnant, the study of 5,598 first-time mothers in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK found.
39% of women conceived in one month of having sex with their partner without contraception, obviously.
But here's the kicker: 8% experienced infertility and failed to conceive after 12 months of trying.
Overall, 2,204 women, or 39 percent, conceived within one month of when they began having sex with their partner without contraception and 468, or 8 percent, experienced infertility and failed to conceive after 12 months of trying.
That 8% infertility is just an average, not including an average or subgroup of women eating fast-food. Fast-food is the advertising euphemism to make junk food palatable.
While women who rarely or never ate fast food had an 8 percent risk of infertility, the risk was 16 percent among women who ate fast food at least four times weekly.
A healthier diet for most folks is to eat lots of polyphenols in their daily diet. That means lots of plant products, but not just any plant products. You can't eat grapes all day long and expect to be healthy. No, I am talking about low-glycemic fruits and vegetables, which turns out to be greens and dark or red colored fruit. Low-glycemic is the key.
“Fast foods contain high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, and sometimes sugar,” said lead study author Jessica Grieger of the Robinson Research Institute and the University of Adelaide in Australia.
But just as the study asserts its conclusions, the authors retract it . . . sort of . . . by disclaiming any direct relationship between diet and health. Oh, brother. I cannot think of any greater or obvious connection in the world. People can absorb a lot of unhealthy habits and put on years but might find themselves aging poorly without noticing it. Or maybe they do notice it, but cannot find a way to stop or a way out of their unhealthy habits. I would go further to say that male fertility is also connected to eating well.
Although these dietary components and their relationship to fertility has not been specifically studied in human pregnancies, higher amounts of saturated fatty acids were identified in oocytes (an egg cell in the ovary) of women undergoing assisted reproduction and studies in mice have demonstrated that a high-fat diet had a toxic effect on the ovaries,” Grieger said by email. “We believe that fast food may be one factor mediating infertility through altered ovarian function.”
The Eurekalert concluded that
. . . while intake of fruit and fast foods affected time to pregnancy, pre-pregnancy intake of green leafy vegetables or fish did not.
Meaning that the vegetables and fish did not disrupt or cause any delay in time to getting pregnant.
There are other culprits to infertility besides junk food. Lisa Rapaport's report lists a few from the study.
The risk increases with age, and can also be exacerbated by smoking, excessive drinking, stress, an unhealthy diet, too much exercise, being overweight or obese or having sexually transmitted infections.
Women in the current study were typically overweight and most of them ate fast food at least twice a week, the study team notes in Human Reproduction.There are ways to boost fertility naturally.
