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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- What your mother ate during pregnancy may have helped determine your sex. Particularly, eating more during the time of conception is now linked to having a baby boy.
A study by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford looked at 740 first-time pregnant mothers in the United Kingdom who did not know the sex of their fetus. The women were asked to record their daily food intake before and throughout the early pregnancy stages. Of the group who consumed the most at conception, fifty-six percent had sons, compared with 45 percent of the group who ate the least. Women who gave birth to boys were more likely to consume a greater amount and variety of nutrients like potassium, calcium, and vitamins C, E and B12. Boy births were also linked to women who ate cereal for breakfast.
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Industrialized countries like the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada have experienced a drop in the amount of boy births over the last 40 years -- about one per 1,000 births each year. Skipping breakfast has also become more common in the developed world. In 1965, 86 percent of adults in the United States ate breakfast compared to 75 percent in 1991. In vitro fertilization (IVF) research shows high glucose levels inhibit female embryos while encouraging male embryos to grow and develop. Skipping breakfast can depress glucose levels which the body may interpret as low food availability, experts say.
Our findings are particularly interesting given the recent debates within the Human Fertilization and Embryology Committee about whether to regulate gender clinics that allow parents to select offspring sex, by manipulating sperm, for non-medical reasons, lead author Dr. Fiona Matthews of the University of Exeter, was quoted as saying. Here we have evidence of a natural mechanism that means that women appear to be already controlling the sex of their offspring by their diet.
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SOURCE: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, published online April 23, 2008
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
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