Ice cream for pregnancy

Getting pregnant or conceiving can sometimes be difficult. Couples trying to get pregnant try all sorts of innovative conception techniques. And of course, many women have ice cream craving during pregnancy. Did you know that ice cream can help getting pregnant or conception?

Ice cream and pregnancy

Dr. Chavarro and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health report a delicious new strategy, i.e. enjoy more of ice cream! Their findings were published in Feb 2007 issue of Human Reproduction.

How does ice cream help with conception?

This recommendation is based on the hypothesis that dairy foods impair ovulatory function. The authors studied followed 18, 555 married, pre-menopausal women who tried to become pregnant during an 8-year period. Dietary patterns were studied using food-frequency questionnaires. They found that 438 couples were infertile due to ovulatory disorder.

After taking into account the impact of other factors like age, parity, body mass index, total calorie intake, physical activity, tobacco and alcohol use, and the use of contraceptive agents, the authors found an inverse correlation between dairy fat intake and anovulatory infertility.

Low fat foods and infertility

For example, women who ate two or more portions of low-fat dairy foods per day had a 85% increased risk of ovulation-related infertility, compared to women who ate less than one portion per week.

High fat food and fertility

Similarly, consumption of at least one portion of high-fat dairy food per day resulted in 27% lower risk of anovulatory infertility as compared to women enjoying less than one high-fat dairy serving per week.

Ice cream and female fertility

The story gets even better. These investigators found that more ice cream the women consume, the lower the risk of infertility.

So the next prescription for pregnancy might read as follows:

• Swap low fat foods for high fat foods
• Rich cream for coffee
• Rich ice cream for dessert

Now this is one prescription of ice cream most of us would love. Beware however, this prescription is limited to those women who are trying to get pregnant. Do not forget to revert to low fat foods after getting pregnant!

Caveat: there is paucity of good scientific data on the relationship of diet and pregnancy. Above results need to be confirmed by further investigations.