In parts of Asia, women who have just given birth are served warm, mineral-rich soups, collagen-rich broths, high-quality proteins, and carefully prepared meals designed to restore the body after pregnancy and labor. Food is treated as medicine. Recovery is treated as sacred.
In the United States, postpartum women are often handed a tray with white toast, juice, Jell-O, low-protein meals, and ultra-processed options. After months of growing a human, hours (or days) of labor, and significant blood and nutrient loss, women's bodies and brains need nourishment.
Birth Is a Major Depleting Event
Giving birth places enormous demands on the body. There is blood loss, tissue damage, hormonal upheaval, nervous system stress, and often sleep deprivation. For many women, this is followed immediately by the intense metabolic demands of breastfeeding.
From a biological perspective, the postpartum period is a time for rebuilding — tissues, hormones, neurotransmitters, blood volume, and energy reserves.
Yet in America, postpartum care focuses almost entirely on whether a woman is medically stable enough to be discharged, not whether her body is being adequately supported to heal.
Food Should Be Part of Clinical Care
If we truly prioritized women’s health after birth, hospital food would look very different. Meals would be warm, protein-forward, easy to digest, and rich in minerals and healthy fats. Instead of sugary drinks and refined carbohydrates, women would receive nourishment designed to stabilize blood sugar, support milk production, and reduce inflammation.
This would include mineral-rich bone broths and soups to support hydration, gut healing, and connective tissue repair. High-quality proteins like eggs, slow-cooked poultry, red meat, and fish would be served at every meal to support tissue repair and hormone production. Iron-rich foods would be prioritized to replenish blood loss and prevent postpartum fatigue, brain fog, and mood issues.
Healthy fats — from butter, olive oil, avocado, and fatty fish — would no longer be feared but embraced for their role in hormonal balance and nervous system recovery. Cooked vegetables would be served to support digestion during a vulnerable time, and carbohydrates would come from nourishing sources like rice, oats, squash, and sweet potatoes rather than white bread and juice.
Warm, Gentle, and Intentional Matters
Many traditional postpartum diets emphasize warm foods because warmth supports circulation, digestion, and the parasympathetic nervous system — the state in which healing actually occurs. Cold foods, ultra-processed snacks, and low-fat “diet” products can increase digestive stress and blood sugar instability during a time when the body is already under strain. This is one reason cultures that prioritize postpartum nourishment often see better long-term outcomes for women’s joint health, mental health, and hormonal resilience.
The Cost of Neglecting Postpartum Nutrition
Postpartum depression, anxiety, exhaustion, and burnout are often framed as emotional or psychological issues alone. But many of these struggles are deeply connected to nutrient depletion, blood sugar instability, poor sleep, and lack of physical recovery support. When we underfeed women nutritionally after birth, we shouldn’t be surprised when they struggle to feel like themselves again. Food will not fix everything — but inadequate food makes everything harder.
It’s Time to Raise the Standard
Postpartum nutrition should not be an optional upgrade, a luxury service, or something women have to research and prepare for on their own while caring for a newborn. It should be a basic standard of care. A society that values women recognizes that healing the mother is part of caring for the baby. If other cultures can do this — we can too.
