ANCESTRAL EATING: Pregnancy Spacing and Special Diets

In another deviation from scheduled programming, I thought I'd write something with the ladies specifically in mind

Welcome back to ANCESTRAL EATING. I’ve been seized by a slightly capricious spirit this week, so I’ve decided—or had no choice but—to deviate from scheduled programming again and give you something a little different. This one’s for the ladies, in particular, focusing at it does on special dietary preparations for pregnancy in Weston Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. A great many of the primitive groups Price studied recognised the need for a special dietary regimen in the lead up to pregnancy, during pregnancy and then after pregnancy as well. Is there any reason we shouldn’t do the same?

Remember there are just two days left for you to 15% off a full year’s subscription. Click the button below.

In contrast with the Masai, the Kikuyu tribe, which inhabits a district to the west and north of the Masai, are characterized by being primarily an agricultural people. Their chief articles of diet are sweet potatoes, corn, beans, and some bananas, millet, and Kafir corn, a variety of Indian millet. The women use special diets during gestation and lactation. The girls in this tribe, as in several others, are placed on a special diet for six months prior to marriage. They nurse their children for three harvests and precede each pregnancy with special feeding.

(Weston Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, chapter 9)

A new study reveals that the amount of protein a mother consumes while pregnant is likely to have profound effects on the facial development of her offspring. A press release describes the study’s findings.

An international team of researchers has found that the amount of protein consumed by pregnant women can impact the facial development of their offspring. In their study, published in the journal Nature Communications, the group sequenced genes from human embryonic facial tissue and conducted experiments with mice and zebrafish.

Prior research, along with anecdotal evidence, has shown that heredity plays a major role in determining what a person's face will look like. But some research has shown that other factors, such as environmental conditions during pregnancy can have an impact, as well. In this new effort, the researchers wondered if the diet eaten by pregnant women could have a subtle impact on the development of the face of their unborn child.

The researchers discovered that yes, at least in the case of mice and zebrafish, maternal diet does have an effect on the facial development of their offspring. When pregnant mice and zebrafish were given more protein in their diets, their jaws and nasal cavities developed more fully.

The study is interesting, of course, but I can’t help thinking: Should this really come as a surprise to us? Surely it’s obvious that a mother’s diet while she’s pregnant has profound effects on the development of her children?

It should be.

It was certainly obvious to many of the tribes that Weston Price studied as part of the globe-trotting research for his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Let’s take a look at some of them in detail.