Women who eat a Mediterranean-style diet -- high in fruits, vegetables, fish and whole grains -- are less likely to have trouble getting pregnant, hints a new study from Spain.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence linking theMediterranean diet to all kinds of health effects, including lower risks of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
But Dr. Jorge Chavarro, who was not part of the study, cautioned that the new results are based on observations, not an experiment.
"There's always the possibility that this association is not causal," said Chavarro, who studies nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Researchers looked at nearly 500 women with fertility problemsand more than 1,600 women of the same age who had at least one child. Based on questionnaires, they measured how closely women followed either a Western-style or a Mediterranean diet.
The Western diet consisted of red meat, fast food, whole-fat dairy products, potatoes, refined grains and sugar-sweetened soda, and was not linked to fertility.
In other words, there was no difference in fertility problems between women who followed this type of diet religiously and those who followed it less strictly.
But the picture changed for women with a Mediterranean diet. About 17 percent of those who stuck to it meticulously said they'd had trouble getting pregnant, while 26 percent of the women who followed that diet least closely had fertility problems.
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