So, Mom, you say you want to have a little boy? You might want to try loading up on the Fruity Pebbles and Special K. [USA Today]
A new report published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Studies (by British researchers at Oxford and the University of Exeter) is the first of its kind to find a relationship between what a pregnant woman eats and the sex of her unborn child.
See, “while men’s sperm determine a baby’s gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women’s bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the male chromosome.”
More calories and, more importantly, more nutrients, make a boy more likely.
Of the women in the study who had the highest calorie intake before getting preggers, 56 percent had boys. Of the women who ate the fewest calories before getting pregnant, 45 percent had boys.
Women who ate at least one bowl of cereal every day were 87 percent more likely to have boys. (Doctors thought this could just be a sign that these women were more likely to be eating breakfast in the morning.)
And have you ever heard the old wives tale that if you want to have a boy, eat a lot of bananas while you’re pregnant? We always thought it was some weird phallic reference, but in the study, women who ate 300 more milligrams of potassium a day were more likely to have sons.
This may explain the falling birth rate for males in the U.S. – think of the obesity crisis. Even though women are eating a lot, they’re also eating a lot of crap without many nutrients. On top of that, many women are on the dieting merry-go-round, where skipped meals or restricted calories make nutrient levels fluctuate.
The doctors were quick to stress that if you want a little girl, that doesn’t mean you should starve yourself. And pigging out is no guarantee of a boy.
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