Women can influence the gender of their child with what they eat before they conceive, according to new research that lends scientific support to age-old superstitions about pregnancy…
The discovery shows higher calorie intake prior to conception can significantly increase the chances of having a son while women on restricted diets are more likely to produce daughters.
“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,” research leader Fiona Mathews.
“But the old take 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…”
“If you want a boy, eat a healthy diet with a high calorie intake, including breakfast,” she told New Scientist magazine.
The most important meal of the day – right?
I had a Korean girlfriend, when her mother found out we had cooked and eaten a couple of rattle snakes during a camp out she had a fit. According to her, our babies would be born with scales and forked tongues!
Considering that the Y chromosome is provided by the male, I find the results of this study to be highly suspect.
Makes sense. Bananas give you boys. So tacos would give you, what?
RBG
I suppose China’s banana consumption is about to quadruple.
#2 – nice to see you passed high school biology. Google is still your friend:
http://tinyurl.com/3wup6g
#5, An OWA login prompt. Very enlightening.
carmen miranda where are you?
#3 lol. I was looking for the banana equivalent. I was thinking clams but tacos are better.
So does eating a poor diet with low calorie intake yield girls?
No wonder why every anorexic women with children I ever met had more girls than boys. Huh.
So, what can we do to simply reduce the numbers of both types of babies? Has anyone noticed that there are now 6.6 billion people on the planet??!!?
We can’t possibly sustain even our current level, let alone an increase.
If you’re curious why I assert that and would like to contest the point, please check out my detailed post on the subject.
http://tinyurl.com/yv6aa4
Got vasectomy?
From the report:
“We went on to test whether particular foods were associated with infant sex. Data of the 133 food items from our food frequency questionnaire were analysed, and we also performed additional analyses using broader food groups. Prior to pregnancy, breakfast cereal, but no other
item, was strongly associated with infant sex (Wald c2Z8.2, pZ0.004). Women producing male infants consumed more breakfast cereal than those with female infants (figure 1). The odds ratio for a male infant was 1.87 (95% CI 1.31, 2.65) for women who consumed at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily compared with those who ate less than or equal to one bowlful per week. No other foods were significantly associated with infant sex (given the multiplicity of testing, p%0.01 was considered significant), and was also true for the broader food categories.
“There is tremendous interest in popular literature and the media about a possible link between dietary mineral intake (particularly calcium, sodium and potassium) and offspring
sex (e.g. Chesterman-Phillips 2005). This is despite there being only scant support for the mechanism operating in humans (Papa et al. 1983) or animals (Cluzan et al. 1965; Bird & Contreras 1986). Doubt has also been cast on the mechanism of altered blood and vaginal pH linking offspring sex with mineral intake (Roche & Lee 2007). Although all of these nutrients did show highly significant associations with foetal sex in our study, we are cautious in the interpretation of the data until further research is available: the associations for sodium and potassium were in the predicted direction, but the association for calcium was not.”
The premise of the study: that the types of food available to a population influences the offspring they produce seems reasonable. But in it, they focus only on the diets of women. Is it possible that there is also a similar influence on the males as to the proportion of XX/XY haploids that mature into sperm? The study doesn’t even look at it. Chances are that a female’s partner is consuming a similar diet as she is, but maybe not. There are too many questions for me to really conclude anything from this.
Oh, I did hear an interesting comment once about women from around the world giving their views on childbirth. One stated, “In like a banana; out like a pineapple.”
Damnit, I hate forgetting to insert a <b>.
…or an </b> even.
I’m out of it today
#15 – Sea Lawyer,
You make some good points when you’re out of it. I don’t think it makes much difference here though. The consensus is forming that this topic is not worthy of serious consideration. Surprisingly, I’m in the majority opinion too. That happens so rarely I need to savor the moment.
11 MisScott: So, what can we do to simply reduce the numbers of both types of babies? Has anyone noticed that there are now 6.6 billion people on the planet??!!?
I figure we must get rid of democracy. You haven’t noticed the relationship between lots of children and politcal power?
RBG
#17: “I figure we must get rid of democracy. You haven’t noticed the relationship between lots of children and politcal power?”
I would suggest there is a stronger relationship between religious belief and the numbers of offspring. The atheists seem to be doing their part in limiting population growth.
18 The atheists seem to be doing their part in limiting population growth.
How’s that working at the ballot box?
RBG
@19 “The atheists seem to be doing their part in limiting population growth.”
Not atheists —> idiots.
Noisy self-hating atheists have a disproportionally loud voice, but does not make them the norm.
RBG,
Nothing’s working at the ballot box. We don’t have a democracy here in the U.S. Democracy would mean one person one vote.
HMeyers,
I’m noisy and I’m an atheist. I’m not self-hating though. I don’t hate myself just because I hate my species. I don’t even hate all individuals, just the net effect of humanity.
#21–Scott==what with the desire to reproduce, and the world with its physical limits, I get an overwhelming sense we really are in a race to the bottom.
Would you complain if I start posting as “Pessimistic Bob”?
TO live a proper, non-embarassing high-tech, lifestyle, it would take a couple of billion at least to sustain all the industries. beyond that though, please follow Scott’s advice and stop breeding. When the population drops there will be more stuff for the rest of us.