What Foods Help Prevent Miscarriage? Nourish Your Body for Pregnancy
Looking for foods that may help prevent miscarriage? While nothing can guarantee a perfect pregnancy outcome, certain nutrient-dense foods like fruits, veggies, and seafood can support a healthier pregnancy. Let’s explore the foods that studies suggest can lower your chance of miscarriage and give your body and baby the best foundation.
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Pregnancy loss of any kind is devastating. It’s a hard thing to go through and it’s hard to know how to talk about it.
If you’ve experienced a miscarriage, it’s common to want to do everything you can to have a healthy pregnancy next time. There’s nothing wrong with that.
And it is a good idea to eat well and prioritize nutrient-dense foods when trying to conceive.
But before we get to that, I want to make sure you know: what you ate or didn’t eat does not make miscarriage your fault. Most miscarriages are due to unknown causes or causes completely out of a woman’s control, like genetic anomalies.
Please do not blame yourself or take on responsibility for something you did not choose. Please do have compassion for yourself. You’ve been through something hard. Take time to heal.
Then, when you’re ready, turn towards the future.
If you’re ready for that, keep on reading and we’ll talk about what foods you can eat to help prevent miscarriage.
RELATED >> How to Miscarry Naturally (From Someone Who’s Done It Three Times)
Can You Prevent Miscarriage With Food?
While I said “foods to prevent miscarriage,” it’s essential to remember that no food can guarantee a pregnancy outcome. As much as we’d love to find a way to protect ourselves from every risk, the reality is that almost nothing can offer that kind of certainty.
That said, many studies do suggest that certain foods may lower the risk of miscarriage. Nutrient-dense foods can give your body the building blocks it needs to support a developing baby.
But it’s important to understand that healthy food itself doesn’t directly prevent miscarriage; it simply supports your body and may increase the chances of a healthy, full-term pregnancy.
Trust > Fear
I’ve personally experienced three miscarriages, so I know the desire to do everything possible to prevent another loss. I’ve done my best to nourish myself and stay informed. Still, despite those efforts, my outcome didn’t change.
It’s okay to want to prevent miscarriage. But it’s also crucial to release yourself from the pressure to find the “perfect” diet or method that guarantees it won’t happen again. Instead, I’ve found peace in trusting God, trusting my body, and making mindful choices without fear.
That mindset—trust rather than fear—is a far healthier place to be.
So, don’t ignore the value of good nutrition. By choosing to eat well, you’re supporting your health and giving yourself and your future babies the best foundation. But remember, you don’t have to be perfect for your baby to be okay.
Foods that May Help Prevent Miscarriage
With that said, let’s get into what you can do to improve your chances of a full-term pregnancy.
Here’s the simple truth: what is best for you and your babies is a balanced, whole-food, plant-rich diet. If you take that as your guide, you are going to be just fine.
However, you probably came here looking for specifics, and I have those, too.
Let’s start with what some studies have suggested as the most influential food of all, when it comes to preventing miscarriage: fruit.
Fruit
Fruit and veggies always take first place when healthy diet is in question. Interestingly, if you are looking for foods to prevent miscarriage, you’ll want to reach for the fruit first.
In one large meta-analysis (a study combining multiple previous studies), researchers concluded that high intake of fruit—particularly fruit that is in season—can lower your chance of miscarriage by 61%.
How much counts as “high intake,” you ask? One study says it’s 14 or more servings per week, or 2 servings per day.
Veggies
After you finish your apple, try a carrot or a salad—because high vegetable intake is associated with a 41% decrease in miscarriage odds.
Again, “high intake” is 14 or more servings every week.
Dairy
Keep drinking your milk and eating your cheese, too, because high dairy intake may reduce the chance of miscarriage by 37%.
Grains
Eating enough grains also helps. Grain may reduce your miscarriage risk by 33%.
Seafood
Eating plenty of seafood can improve your odds of preventing a miscarriage as well. Compared to women who eat little to no seafood, women who eat seafood regularly have a 19% lower risk of miscarriage.
Seafood recommendations for pregnant women vary, and it’s common for women to be advised to avoid fish and raw seafood. That can be confusing.
In all the research I’ve done, I’ve found that the evidence backs what your gut probably tells you—that seafood contains important nutrients and so is great for your health, even and especially while pregnant.
And at the same time, it is wise to avoid high amounts of mercury, so avoid fish like shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish while pregnant. But get at least 2 servings per week of low-mercury fish if you like it.
(Interestingly, data on kinds of meat other than fish were inconclusive.)
Eggs
Eggs are fantastic for you during pregnancy, whether you’ve experienced loss or not. Eating eggs regularly may reduce your miscarriage risk by 19%.
Other Nutrients to Get
In addition to specific foods, there are a few key nutrients to be aware of.
Folate
First up is one you’ve probably heard of: folate, which commonly comes in a form called folic acid. I won’t go into a lot of depth here, but folate is a general name that encompasses many types of this B vitamin.
Folic acid is a synthetic version that works for some people but is hard for some people’s body to use.
Folate is naturally found in foods like spinach, beans, some nuts and seeds, and some fruit.
You can also get it in supplement form. If you choose to supplement (which is wise for most women trying to conceive or pregnant), look for “5-methyltetrahydrofolate” or “5-MTHF” on the label. Those are the bioavailable forms that your body will use best.
Folate is important for the development of your baby’s neural tubes, which form very early in pregnancy. That’s why it’s a good idea to get enough through diet or supplementation even before you know you’re pregnant.
Folate may even directly reduce your chance of miscarriage.
Choline
Folate is often the focus, but choline is just as important and does many of the same things for you and your baby.
Like folate, choline helps your baby’s brain and neural tubes develop as they should and contributes to other important processes like controlling how genes work, how cells grow and change, and how organs develop.
Vitamin D
We often talk about getting vitamin D through sun exposure—and that is important. But most of us still don’t get enough. Especially for women trying to conceive and pregnant women, vitamin D is essential.
Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency are associated with increased chance of miscarriage. So women wanting to have a baby need lots.
In fact, a 2012 study showed that pregnant women benefit most from 4,000 IU (international units) of vitamin D daily—much higher than the common recommendation of 600 IU.
So if you feel like your body needs it, consider taking a vitamin D supplement as well as spending a little more time in the sun.
TIP: Get a supplement containing vitamin D3, called cholecalciferol, for best results.
Antioxidants
While not a commonly discussed nutrient, antioxidants also make it on the list of foods that help prevent miscarriage. Antioxidants help to protect your cells and can protect against inflammation, among other benefits.
The researchers behind the meta-analysis I mentioned earlier concluded that foods rich in antioxidants reduce the chances of miscarriage. They then added that “in contrast, higher consumption of a proinflammatory diet or processed food was found to increase the miscarriage odds.”
In fact, one group of studies found evidence that women who ate lots of antioxidant-rich foods had a 57% lower chance of miscarriage than women who ate more inflammatory diets.
So the take away? Minimize inflammatory foods like processed meats, refined grains, sugars, and fried foods, and increase leafy greens, nuts, berries, and other antioxidant-rich foods.
Other Tips to Prevent Miscarriage
In addition to the many foods you can eat to help prevent miscarriage, there are also some lifestyle tweaks that can reduce your chance of experiencing a pregnancy loss.
Skip “Fertility” Diets
First, staying in the food realm, avoid extreme diets. While many people recommend special fertility diets, including a Mediterranean diet, most of those diets don’t have evidence to back them up.
Two Exceptions
That said, the meta-analysis I’ve been citing explains two exceptions to this “no diet” rule:
- Healthy Nordic Food Index: A diet adhering to this index reflects traditional Nordic foods considered healthy, like rye bread, berries, cruciferous vegetables, and fermented foods. (For context, the Nordic countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.) You can get a quick overview of the Nordic diet here.
- Prime Diet Quality Score (PDQS): The PDQS is a scoring system that assesses diet quality by focusing on whole, nutrient-dense foods rather than counting calories or specific macronutrients. Researchers classify foods like green and cruciferous vegetables, whole fruits, poultry, fish, and eggs as healthy, while red/processed meats, refined grains, sugars, and fried foods are considered unhealthy. A higher PDQS score was associated with a 47% reduction in miscarriage risk.
What do these two diets have in common? They both emphasize whole, minimally processed foods over specific nutrient amounts—a valuable takeaway for anyone wanting to focus on diet quality.
Reduce Your Stress
Along with healthy eating, intentionally managing stress can support a healthier pregnancy. Chronic stress impacts our nervous system and overall health, so making time for stress-relief practices is an important step if you’re looking to reduce your chance of miscarriage.
Get to a Healthy Weight
While there’s no single “ideal” weight before pregnancy, reaching a healthy weight—not being overweight or underweight—can improve your chances of a healthy pregnancy.
Conclusion: Don’t Let Fear Win
To sum up, miscarriage is NOT your fault, no matter what you ate or didn’t eat. And no food can guarantee you won’t have a miscarriage.
With that said, if you are ready, there are diet and lifestyle tweaks you can make to reduce your chance of having a miscarriage. Foods like fruits, vegetables, dairy, grains, seafood, and eggs (in that order) may help prevent miscarriage.
Avoiding strict “fertility diets,” reducing your stress, and getting to a healthy weight before pregnancy can also help.
Above all, don’t let fear win the day. Seek healing, choose to trust, and make decisions from a space of peace. That’s the best advice I could give you.
Until next time,
Allison
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