Can Mom's Diet Influence Baby's Sex?
Is it time to chalk one up for the old wives and their tales? Maybe, according to a British study - the first of its kind to draw a link between dietary habits and the sex of baby. Here's what the study found:
Having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seemed to raise the odds of having a boy.
The research involved about 700 first-time pregnant women in the United Kingdom who didn't know the sex of their fetuses. They were asked about their eating habits in the year before getting pregnant.
- Among women with the highest calorie intake before pregnancy (but still within a normal, healthy range), 56 percent had boys, versus 45 percent of the women with the lowest calorie intake.
- Women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87 percent more likely to have boys than those who ate no more than one bowlful per week.
- Compared with the women who had girls, those who had boys ate an additional 300 milligrams of potassium daily on average.
- Women who had boys also ate about 400 calories more daily than those who had girls, on average.
Here's what the experts have to say about it
"It is not proof, but it fits with evidence from test tube fertilization that male embryos thrive best with longer exposure to nutrient-rich lab cultures" Dr. Tarun Jain, Fertility Specialist from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Jain also hypothesizes; "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"
Are they on to something?
It's a fascinating proposition that certainly warrants more research.
Dr. Fiona Mathews, lead author of the study cautions that women not try and pig out if they want a boy and starve themselves if they want a girl. It is important to note that the women studied were at opposite ends of the "normal" caloric range.
By many researchers' accounts, it is difficult to obtain accurate dietary information from food frequency questionnaires. For some, recalling what they ate for dinner last night is challenging enough - let alone an entire year's worth. Add to that what my wife calls "pregger-brain" and it opens the door for even more potential error.
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With studies that ask people to "remember" their diets, I'm always highly skeptical.
This is such a random study. So much so that I commented on it in my video blog this week (unstarved.com).
ReplyHi Red, I have to say I'm skeptical about this one too. However, I've just been doing research for a book I've been comissioned to write (Keeping our children out of food jail) and I do have to say that I think there is enough fascinating evidence that what a mother eats during her pregnancy definitely affects what her child will choose to eat later on.
ReplyCari
I don't think it's asking people to "remember" what they ate, as much as asking them to remember how they always tend to eat - which isn't as difficult as it sounds. I'm not a big cereal eater. I'm not now, and I know I wasn't a year ago either.
ReplyAnd yet, I'm having a girl.
ReplyI heard about this study this morning on the news. It's sort of an interesting theory. Basically, they said that women who ate breakfast regularly at the time of conception had a higher chance of having boys. It's kind of a crapshoot though, because if you don't remember exactly what and when you eat, the stats could be completely meaningless.
Then again, after hearing this study, I'm not surprised that Nicole Ritchie had a girl.
ReplyI wonder what, if any, evolutionary advantages there are to mothers being better capable of birthing males when having sustained calorie intake.
ReplyI doubt there are any evolutionary advantages. To me, studies like this scream of bias (conscious or not) on the part of the researchers, in favor of males, of course. Here's the subtext: "Women who take better care of themselves are more likely to have male babies. Ergo, female babies are inferior to males, as they are the result of unhealthy maternal pre-natal behaviors."
ReplyI don't take findings like this one like that - female babies have a higher survival rate following birth through the first year, with males having a higher mortality rate after birth through the first year.
ReplyI think you're trying a little too hard to read something into this. You could just as easily say that because female embryos are more likely to survive less-than-ideal prenatal conditions, women are inherently more capable of survival than men and thus superior.
ReplyMaybe they should study the diets of fathers.
ReplySo is this study canceling out the fact that the male sperm is at fault for the sex of the fetus? I saw it on the news this week and i was skeptical but i would love to test it out myself.
Replyummm im pretty sure that the diet has nothing to do with the babys sex. i was taught that it was a XX or a XY to make the sex.
ReplyTrue, the sperm determines gender; what isn't clear is whether the mother's diet influences A) which sperm, X or Y, is better able to enter and fertilize the egg (does diet change the outer membrane of the egg in a way that favors one or the other?) and/or B) which gender of embryo is better able to implant and result in an ongoing pregnancy (does diet change the environment to a meaningful degree which favors the implantation and growth of one or the other gender embryo?)
ReplyBut up to 1/4 of pregnancies (especially first pregnancies) result in miscarriage, often before the woman is even aware she was pregnant, and diet can certainly help determine whether the embryo survives.
ReplyI think it would have been clearer if the authors of the study had pointed out that yes, of course, it is the sperm that determines the sex of the fetus. BUT one thing I learned while doing way too much reading while pregnant is that male fetuses (fetii?) are (sorry, guys) more fragile than females, and that while there are actually more males conceived than females, the boys are miscarried at a higher rate, so that (very slightly) more girls are actually born than boys.
The way this study fits into that is, theoretically I suppose, if the mother's diet contained more nutrients / calories (I guess we are assuming that the mother eating more calories means that she is also consuming more nutrients), it could perhaps make it more likely that more of the fragile male fetuses would survive. So while the same number of males were conceived, fewer were miscarried so more were born.
That's my take on the study.
ReplyWhen you observe celebrities who have babies, it seems there are tons who are having girls. They "can't" gain too much weight or else it would be more of a challenge to get back to their original skinny body. So I definately SEE how this study makes sense. What do you think?
ReplyThe number of times the word 'boy' was mentioned: 9
The number of times the word 'girl' was mentioned: 3
Kind of reminds me of the quote:
Women make up 50% of the world's population, but own 1% of the world.
This study was most probably conducted by a bigot and as such shouldn't be taken seriously.
Cereal is usually something eaten by health-conscious women who tend to eat less than people not so health-conscious who eat pancakes or muffins for breakfast. It's contradictory.
ReplyThe number of times 'tapir' was mentioned: 0.
This post is obviously discriminatory against tapirs.
ReplyI agree with you. So what if they said the word boy more than girl? The authors don't have to use them equally.
Replyare you a troll?
ReplyMy wife and I bought a girl diet plan from www.boygirldiet.com We already have 2 boys and we really want a girl so desperatley. We really hope this works. We think it would be nice to have a baby girl.
Reply