by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy

Cutting back on fast food and eating more fruit could boost your fertility, a new study suggests.
Researchers quizzed almost 5,600 pregnant women in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and Ireland about their pre-pregnancy diets, and asked them to recall how long it took them to conceive.
According to the results published in the journal Human Reproduction, women who reported eating fast food 4 or more times a week prior to conception took almost a month longer to get pregnant than women who ate fast food infrequently. The study defined fast food as meals such as burgers, pizza, fried chicken and fries purchased from a restaurant, but not similar meals cooked and eaten at home.
Meanwhile, women who said they consumed fruit 3 or more times a day got pregnant about half a month sooner than women who only ate fruit 1 to 3 times a month, the researchers found. Interestingly, eating leafy greens and fish didn't appear to affect the women's chances of conceiving.

The study relied on women recalling what they ate and how long they took to conceive, so the data may not be fully accurate. And although the researchers took into account some lifestyle factors that can influence fertility such as being overweigh and smoking, it's possible there were other factors also affecting the women's fertility that didn't get reported. For example, the researchers didn't ask the women's partners what they ate in the lead-up to conception.
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