After I gave birth to both of my daughters, my postpartum nanny made me miyeok guk every single day for the first four weeks.

I didn't question it. It was just what you did. You had a baby. You ate seaweed soup.

It wasn't until Behzad — my husband, who has a PhD in nutrition — started explaining the actual science behind it that I understood why Korean mothers have been eating this soup after childbirth for generations.

What is miyeok guk?

Miyeok guk is a Korean seaweed soup made from dried miyeok — the same seaweed known in Japanese cuisine as wakame. It's brothy, slightly briny, deeply comforting, and takes about 30 minutes to make.

In Korea it's eaten on birthdays as a way of honoring your mother — because she ate it after giving birth to you. It's also standard hospital food for new moms in Korean hospitals.

Why Korean moms eat it postpartum

Miyeok is exceptionally rich in three nutrients that postpartum women are commonly depleted in:

Iodine — essential for thyroid function and breast milk production. Many postpartum women are low in iodine, especially if they weren't supplementing during pregnancy. Seaweed is one of the most concentrated dietary sources of iodine available.

Iron — you lose significant iron during childbirth. Rebuilding iron stores is one of the most important nutritional priorities in the postpartum period, and it directly affects energy levels and mood.

Calcium — if you're breastfeeding, your body will pull calcium from your bones to put into your milk. Dietary calcium matters more postpartum than at almost any other time in your life.

Miyeok guk covers all three in a single bowl of warm soup. Your Korean great-grandmother didn't know the biochemistry. She just knew it worked.

Behzad's note on postpartum nutrition:

"The postpartum period is one of the most nutritionally demanding times in a woman's life — in many ways more demanding than pregnancy itself. Your body is recovering from birth, potentially breastfeeding, running on almost no sleep, and trying to regulate hormones that are in significant flux. The nutrients in miyeok guk aren't incidental. Iodine, iron, and calcium are exactly what the research points to as commonly depleted postpartum. Food traditions often encode nutritional wisdom that predates the science by centuries. This is a good example of that."