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Nutrition and Human Reproduction pp 91–122Cite as

Nutrition, Fatness and Fertility: The Effect of Food Intake on Reproductive Ability

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Abstract

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Brillat-Savarin’s aphorism (1) can be expanded to: “Tell me what you eat, and I will also tell you how well you reproduce.” Recent findings that the onset and maintenance of regular menstrual function in the human female are each dependent on the maintenance of a minimum weight for height, apparently representing a critical fat storage (2), imply that a particular body composition of relative fatness, (fat/lean ratio, or fat/body weight) may be an important determinant for human female reproductive ability (3–6)

Keywords

  • Menstrual Cycle
  • Total Body Water
  • Birth Interval
  • Critical Weight
  • Human Female

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Rose E. Frisch

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  1. Rose E. Frisch
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Hygiene and Public Health, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    W. Henry Mosley

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Frisch, R.E. (1978). Nutrition, Fatness and Fertility: The Effect of Food Intake on Reproductive Ability. In: Mosley, W.H. (eds) Nutrition and Human Reproduction. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0790-7_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0790-7_7

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