Answer from: Xanthi Maragkoudaki, MSc, ANutr, PhD
In terms of specific diet, there is not a specific diet that is the best for fertility but in general, the mediterranean diet due to the high fiber content that has been associated with improved due to the oxidant capacity, it has a it is one of the best diets to follow in order to improve your fertility.
Answer from: Melanie Brown, MSc
Well, I always liken the best fertility diet to the mediterranean diet. So, the mediterranean diet is a bit more, unfortunately, it’s a bit more of a concept than a reality now because all the traditional mediterranean foods are rapidly of course being replaced by our McDonald’s and our fast foods and just because of people’s working lives and stuff, I guess. But the mediterranean diet is just very unprocessed. Again, we’re back to processed versus unprocessed. It’s very unprocessed, it’s very colourful so, the more colour you’ve got in the diet, the more colourful fruit and vegetables, the more antioxidants you have in that diet. Antioxidants, especially dietary antioxidants, are absolutely key to maintaining the integrity of all our cells. So our skin cells will be affected by what we eat, if you eat, we both know, that if we’ve had a rough few weeks, everything starts to look a bit rubbish. Certainly my skin is just the first thing that just goes if i’m not really good with my diet. it’s going to be the same with our eggs and our sperm. So we want these antioxidant rich diets of lots of strong colours. Antioxidants are found in the pigments of fruit and vegetables so, the brighter and stronger the colour black, blue, green, orange, red, the more antioxidants you’re going to get and so that’s the sort of basis. Low red meat, low sugar, low alcohol, low coffee – not no sugar, no alcohol, no coffee, no meat, no fun. It’s just the widest bit of the pyramid if you imagine the pyramid – is all your whole grains and your fruit and vegetables, nuts, seeds, pulses, then you go up chicken, fish, eggs and then at the top is your cake and your wine and your red meat. So that is the mediterranean diet.
