One of Dr. Weston Price’s most interesting findings in his studies of non-industrialized people was the practice of consuming special nutrient-dense foods in preparation for pregnancy. As Price reported in his book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”, these foods were often considered sacred and were eaten by both men and women for about six months before conception, and then by pregnant women during pregnancy and pregnancy. ‘feeding with milk.
Parents also gave these foods to their children during the growth period. These cultures recognized that additional nutrition was necessary during the formation and development of children’s bodies.
What were these sacred foods? As described by Price in Chapter 3 of his book (“Isolated and Modernized Swiss”), in Switzerland, engaged couples and pregnant women insisted on consuming the dark yellow butter of cows when they first went to pasture in the spring.
They considered this butter to be so sacred that their pastors would place a bowl of spring butter on the altar of a chapel in their church – they would light a wick in the butter to honor the life-giving force it contained.
In other chapters, Price points out that many cultures considered the liver a sacred food – either the liver of cattle, sheep, goats, and game, or the liver of fish. The sacred food in the Outer Hebrides was cod’s head, stuffed with oats and minced cod liver, which children ate for breakfast to ensure they would grow up healthy and strong!
African tribes carried the liver on the tips of their spears, considering it too sacred to touch. In the South Seas, men took great risks to hunt sharks, mainly to get the livers needed for healthy reproduction. They often placed the livers inside the stomach muscle of the sharks and then hung them from trees. What was leaking was a kind of fermented shark liver oil, considered very important for having healthy babies.
Other important foods included eggs and fish roe. I’ve had several conversations with Asian parents who told me that their grandparents believed that eggs and fish roe would make their children smart.
What do you notice about these foods? They are all high in fat and high in cholesterol – the very foods we are told not to eat were the foods most valued by traditional cultures for good health – especially the health of their children.
The practice of preparing for pregnancy by consuming nutrient-dense foods agrees very well with what science tells us. Take vitamin A, for example. No food is higher in vitamin A than liver, while butter, egg yolks and fish eggs are also good sources.
In a landmark article, published in 2010, researchers at Michigan State University summarized research on the role of vitamin A in fetal development. They reported that vitamin A requirements begin as early as the second or third week of conception – when heart and brain cell specialization occurs – often before you even know you are pregnant – the heart and brain of the fetuses are forming! Without vitamin A, these organs form with malformations and miscarriage is likely.
When conception takes place and the embryo begins to develop, it contains undifferentiated stem cells. After three weeks, these cells begin to differentiate into specialized cells that will develop into the heart, spinal cord, lungs, and nervous system. Stem cells differentiate into specialized cells when they receive a signal, and that signal is vitamin A.
Each organ system begins its development during a specific window of time. Vitamin A regulates the differentiation of primitive cells into cells specific to each organ system – essentially, signaling the genes their working orders so that they “know” where to locate and what type of tissues to become – which is why j like to call vitamin A the “concert master of fetal development”. If vitamin A is lacking during one of these windows, the organs grow abnormally or not at all.
Throughout pregnancy, vitamin A continues to help direct the formation of the central nervous system, circulatory, urogenital, and respiratory systems, as well as the development of the skull, skeleton, and limbs. Vitamin A deficiencies during the period when one of these systems begins to specialize can lead to abnormalities and defects.
Vitamin A is especially important for the development of the eyes, ears, craniofacial region and thymus, thyroid and parathyroid glands. During mid-gestation, vitamin A is needed for the development of the fetus’s lungs and kidneys.
After the formation of all organ systems, vitamin A supports their growth. Chronic vitamin A deficiency during pregnancy compromises the liver, heart, and kidneys, and impairs lung growth and development during the final weeks of gestation.
Thus, we can see the innate wisdom of traditional people to build up their stores of vitamin A before conception and to maintain them with vitamin A-rich foods throughout pregnancy – this practice contrasts sharply with the lack of care with which Westerners bring children into the world. world.
How to prepare for healthy children is exactly what should be taught in sex ed classes, but it is not. Instead, young people are encouraged to eat a plant-based diet that lacks the nutrients needed to have healthy children.
In addition to vitamin A, traditional sacred foods provide many other nutrients necessary for the optimal development of the fetus in the womb: vitamins D and K2, vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, biotin and folate. An amino acid necessary for growth and development is glycine, available by eating animal skin (no skinless chicken breasts please!) and bone broth.
These nutrients are needed throughout the growing years for optimal growth and development. So mom and dad, please feed your children well!
Back to vitamin A for a moment: These days, the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies do not recommend vitamin A supplementation for pregnant women, although as recently as 2005 the FDA recommended 8,000 international units (IU) of vitamin A. during pregnancy.
The commonly cited study in support of vitamin A avoidance during pregnancy was published in 1995. Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine asked more than 20,000 women to answer questionnaires about this they ate and the supplements they took before and during pregnancy.
The data indicated that cranial-neural crest defects increased with increasing vitamin A doses, but neural tube defects decreased with increasing vitamin A intake. For other types of defects, no correlation could not be found.
This study is a poor excuse to warn pregnant women against consuming liver and cod liver oil, as it contained many flaws. For example, the researchers did not distinguish between synthetic vitamin A obtained from multivitamins and processed foods such as margarine, and natural vitamin A from foods, nor did they determine the status in vitamin A by taking blood samples. Another flaw was the fact that their conclusions were based on food recall surveys, which can be notoriously inaccurate.
But the main problem with basing anti-vitamin A policy on the 1995 study is that it contradicts previous research, which found that high levels of vitamin A did not increase the risk of birth defects. A 1998 study in Switzerland found that a dose of 30,000 IU per day for pregnant women produced blood levels unrelated to birth defects.
A 1999 study in Rome, Italy found no birth defects in infants whose mothers consumed an average of 50,000 IU of vitamin A per day, that’s a lot of vitamin A! Some participants took up to 300,000 IU of vitamin A daily during pregnancy without birth defects in the offspring.
What does the Weston Price Foundation Preconception and Pregnancy Diet look like? It contains butter and eggs from pastured animals, liver about twice a week (think delicious pate or liver sausage), high quality dairy products like whole raw milk and cheese, red meat, fish and shellfish and homemade bone broth. We also recommend a natural cod liver oil supplement for vitamins A and D. This diet will provide the amount of vitamin A consistent with Roman and Swiss studies, as well as vitamins D and K2.
At the Weston A. Price Foundation, we love to receive reports of healthy, beautiful babies whose parents wisely adopted a nutrient-dense preconception and pregnancy diet. At a time when so many children are suffering from major health issues, these babies are proof that we can do a better job for our children.
The opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussions and friendly debates. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit via our form here.
