Welsh TV presenter Alex Jones has claimed that adopting a vegan diet helped her get pregnant.
The One Show host, who returned to the small screen this week following the birth of her third child, made the comments while interviewing actor Ralf Little on Thursday 6 January.
Little disclosed that he is currently taking part in Veganuary, which sees thousands of people across the UK eat a plant-based diet for the month of January.
“Veganuary, good for the planet but not so easy to do I found,” Jones said as she asked the Death in Paradise star how he was finding the challenge.
“There’s that old joke isn’t there ‘how do you know someone vegan? Because they tell you within three seconds’,” Little replied. “I’m just giving it a go and so far it’s going alright.”
Recalling her own participation in Veganuary in 2021, Jones said: “Well I ended up pregnant after being vegan for a bit. It was so healthy you see wasn’t it.”
Little looked visibly shocked by her comments, responding with: “I don’t think that’s how it works, I’m no scientist.”
Jones has three children with husband Charlie Thomson; sons Edward, 4, and Kit, 2, and a baby girl named Annie, who was born in August 2021.
In an interview with Mail Online in May last year, Jones revealed that she did not realise she was pregnant with Annie as she mistook the early symptoms as the effects of her new vegan diet.
“I just felt really tired but, of course, in hindsight I was pregnant. I thought it was the veganism making me drained of energy but it wasn’t,” Jones said.
“This is ridiculous in a third pregnancy, but I didn’t realise the clues were there because I honestly blamed everything on the veganism. I was so tired and hungry all the time and I thought it was that.”
There is little research on whether eating vegan can affect chances of pregnancy, but experts have long studied links between diet and fertility.
A 2020 study, carried out by the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health and School of Medicine, found that women’s diets high in folic acid, vitamin b12 and omega-3 fatty acids were linked to high fertility.
Diets high in trans fat, red and processed meats, potatoes, sweets, and sweetened beverages were found to have negative effects on fertility.
