In this sneak peek into the upcoming Beautiful Babies E-Course, you’ll learn Why Nutrition Matters. Did you know that what you eat can make it hard to get pregnant? That being too skinny can actually disrupt your hormones and prevent pregnancy? That PCOS is reversible? That what you eat when you’re pregnant can ensure your child never needs braces, glasses, or frequent doctors visits? In the video below, you’ll learn about why nutrition is so important.
Each week’s lesson comes with videos, downloadable handouts, positive birth stories, and a digital workbook to help you navigate the lesson. Today, I’m giving you a sneak peek into the first week’s lesson on Why Nutrition Matters.
Why Nutrition Matters: A Sneak Peek
Begin by downloading the first lesson’s workbook. The workbook is designed to
- walk you through the lessons,
- help you ask yourself challenging questions, and
- be a place for you to take notes and record observations.
Download the first lesson’s workbook by clicking here.
After you open the workbook, you’ll note that in the first lesson there are three videos, one handout, and one birth story in addition to the content found online.
For the purposes of the sneak peek, I’m letting you take a look at the first of the three videos.
Watch the first lesson’s first video below.
Interested in Finding Out More?
Click here to check out the Beautiful Babies Online Course, find a course schedule, and get your questions about the e-course answered.
Hurry! Lock In $70 Of Savings Before October 22, 2011.
If you register before October 31st, you’ll save $50 off the regular enrollment price!
If you sign up before October 22, and use the code BEAUTIFUL20 at checkout, you’ll save another $20.
That’s a $70 discount off the regular enrollment price.
Please note that this is the ONLY coupon being made available to the public. You will never see a price this low for this e-course again.
Click here to use the coupon code BEAUTIFUL20 to enroll & save.
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I like that the workbook has ‘check on your learning’ questions. I was afraid this would all be based on things I’ve already read, but it looks like perhaps not. Will take a look at finances for the class.
I successfully conceived for the first time after doing your Real Food Nutrition course last Spring. I credit the knowledge gained from the course in helping me get pregnant, so I’m definitely signing up for this course!
Does your course address miscarriages? I seem to have no trouble getting pregnant but have had two miscarriages this year. Thanks
Hi Kristin,
While I usually absolutely adore what you do here at Food Renegade (your kombucha method is a particular favorite in my house), as a graduate student in reproductive anthropology who works with pregnant women in one of those so-called “traditional” cultures, I have to respectfully disagree with your romanticization of pregnancy and early childhood for people living in these cultures. “Traditional” practices surrounding nutrition and early childhood range widely across the globe, from preventing infants from receiving the incredibly beneficial colostrum (much of Africa and south Asia) to greatly restricting maternal caloric intake (Japan) to giving infants supplemental herbal tea, which risks their deaths from diarrheal disease due to unsafe water (Kenya). To say that children in traditional cultures rarely needed to see a doctor is patently false. Children in developing contexts die on a daily basis due to complications from malnutrition, malaria and diarrheal disease, all present in areas with traditional diets, and all easily treatable at maternal and child health clinics. Working with people who consume a “traditional” diet (although maize has replaced millet as a staple grain, a significant nutritional downgrade), children see a doctor less often due to economic expenses and due to a widespread belief that chronic parasitic infections are a normal phenomenon, and women often either die due to obstructed labor or require c-sections because lifetime malnutrition stunts pelvic growth. Infertility is not rare, but quite common due to a lack of treatment for chronic pelvic and sexually transmitted infections, so much so that entire swaths of Africa are labeled the “infertility belt”.
Though I would far from characterize modernization as universally beneficial (see rising rates of obesity in transitional communities), the use of the term traditional is offensive in that it is often used to justify neo-colonialist programs that exclude people from “traditional”, already marginalized groups from participation in the increasingly globalized world. By saying that people were better off in their traditional cultures, countries justify their exclusion of non-dominant from educational and medical programs which can both improve and save lives. Far too often it boils down to the argument used in the United States prior to the civil rights movement that people of African descent were inherently less able to achieve academically and/or better off during slavery when they had their food and shelter provided for.
So yes, nutrition during pregnancy is very important, and the dominant biomedical nutritional recommendations could use some significant tweaking. By all means help women understand just how much good nutrition can improve their and their children’s lives, but please don’t continue the romanticization of all aspects of traditional culture and the traditional diet as inherently perfect and good. The reality is that many traditional diets, even those that are on the surface nutritionally dense, deprive women and children of essential nutrition, by making them the last to eat, and that access to a sufficient number of calories is few and far between, with lifetime consequences.
Best,
Sarah
I think that if you took the class or read this site more thoroughly, you’d see that I do have a balanced perspective about traditional cultures that is not overly-romanticized.
In Weston Price’s research, he usually found two subsets of indigenous cultures: those who were robust and healthy with excellent facial structure, and those who were sickly and without excellent facial structure. He looked for an explanation for the differences using common medical theory. Was good health or poor health inherited? He found that no, it was not. For example, brothers who had grown up on different sides of an isolating mountain, twins who had been raised by different families, and parents who had eaten a more traditional diet than their their kids all had these radical differences in health and appearance. So what could explain the phenomenom? He hypothesized that it was dietary, and set about surveying their diets. Turns out that those who were infirm had modified and modernized their diet somehow, while those were strong and robust had stuck to eating traditionally raised and prepared foods. This happened place after place, in locales all around the world. Universally, the groups that were the healthiest had diets that kept up with basic traditional dietary principles (which I’ve blogged about elsewhere).
So, it’s not that there weren’t unhealthy examples of traditional peoples (obviously poverty, famine, and industrialization played a huge part in poor health). It’s what those who had good health had in common that concerns me.
Hope that helps clarify!
Sarah,
I agree with you. I’m not a biologist or an anthropologist, but I have traveled extensively in many different parts of the world, and have worked with some incredibly unhealthy children in “traditional” cultures. It is “normal” for infants to die from illness and malnutrition in so many places, and it is dangerous to overgeneralize about the health and well-being of “traditional” (i.e., third-world) cultures. We can absolutely learn both nutritional dos and don’ts from these cultures, but claiming that all traditional cultures have straight teeth and no morning sickness and no infertility is to ignore the reasons why women in the first world are given prenatal nutritional supplements in the first place.
Hi my name is Ryan Smith and I have already paid and taken the course. I am just about due to have my baby boy and I wanted to go over some of the lessons. I got a new computer and my passcodes are lost 🙁 Can you email me access to the lessons? It would be greatly appreciated since I am in my last few weeks!!
Thanks,
Ryan
Will there be any more specials coming up?! A few friends and I would love to take the course but are waiting for another coupon or price reduction to sign up 🙂