Cereal & Bananas for Breakfast Leads to Baby Boys |
Sleeping Beauty (photo by Kristine Kisky, courtesy of morguefile.com)
Scientists at Britain’s Oxford and Exeter universities have concluded that a mother's eating habits around the time of conception can influence the sex of her baby. It seems women who eat high calorie diets are more likely to give birth to a male child than women on restricted diets.
An article in the Guardian quotes Fiona Mathews, a specialist in mammalian biology at Exeter University, who led the research, as saying:
We were able to confirm the old wives' tale that eating bananas and so having a high potassium intake was associated with having a boy, as was a high sodium intake. But the old tale about drinking a lot of milk to have a girl doesn't seem to hold up. In fact, more calcium meant they were again more likely to have a boy.According to the article in the Guardian:
The finding makes evolutionary sense and mirrors a similar effect seen in other animals. Females are more likely to be born when food is scarce, since they are more likely to produce at least some babies. Males are more of a gamble though, with some having lots of offspring and others having none.
The researchers warned against trying to determine the sex of a child with drastic dietary changes as those changes may cause other health problems for the mother and infant.
If you’d like to read the article in the Guardian cited above go to: What are little boys made of? Scientists pinpoint bananas
