As the proud mom of three terrific daughters, and a third daughter myself, I am always a little dismayed by people who have strong preferences for children according to sex–they usually want boys. So it was with some trepidation that I read a new article by Fiona Mathews, Paul Johnson, and Andrew Neil in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B entitled “You are what your mother eats: evidence for maternal preconception diet influencing foetal sex in humans.”
According to these researchers, women with “high resources” at conception were more likely to have sons, compared to women who produced daughters. Although the overall ratio of the participants’ male and female offspring was 50:50, 56% of women in the highest third of nutrient intake at conception, according to their food diaries, gave birth to boys, compared to only 45% in the lowest third. In particular, moms who had sons seemed to eat a lot of breakfast cereal. To rule out the possibility that carrying a child of a certain sex influenced your eating patterns, the researchers noted that there were no systematic patterns of eating during pregnancy.
The researchers have added a new possible explanation for the recent drop in birth rates of boys. Many others have attributed the drop to possible pollution effects and other environmental causes. These new data suggest that the drop in nutrient consumption among young women in industrialized nations might also account for the observed changes. In case you’re wondering how the researchers can say that we have a drop in nutrients during an obesity epidemic, they argue that most of the weight gain is due to less activity and the “alteration in the distribution of energy intakes.”
It seems a bit premature to start buying up Cheerios or skipping breakfast in order to select the sex of your offspring. I have always been a breakfast eater. I just can’t imagine skipping breakfast, and I don’t recall ever having done so, except when I’ve had the flu. Another curiosity is that I’ve only recently started eating cereal, because it actually has fewer calories than my previous breakfasts. For most of my adult life, breakfast has meant eggs and toast or pancakes. One would think that those breakfasts would have even more nutrients than cereal.
In the meantime, it seems to me to be common sense to eat nutritious foods that you like, and let nature do her thing.
7 Comments
bwerter · April 28, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I saw this on the news and they were talking about it like it was the be all end all determinate for the sex of a baby. I think its going to leave a lot of people disappointed. People need to be sure to take studies like this very lightly. I may be wrong but I thought that sex was determined by the chromosomes of the males sperm. How does breakfast choice have anything to do with this?
Laura Freberg · April 28, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Of course you’re right about the chromosome thing. It simply appears that the mom’s chemistry can skew the likelihood that sperm carrying that X or Y chromosome will be the winner.
You’re also completely right about taking this research lightly. Note that the differences are not 100% of the people with a certain diet have boys, etc. These are statistically significant results, but diet is only one of numerous factors influencing the sex of offspring.
If you liked this post, try this one, too: http://laurafreberg.com/blog/?p=134
mbernie · April 29, 2008 at 11:46 am
I would think that there would be many factors that influence the sex of a baby. I bet if you studied how much sunlight a soon-to-be mother was exposed to one could find a correlation between sex. I have even heard, on numerous occasions, that the position during conception can correlate with the sex of the baby. (however I find this quite hard to believe)
How many women were a part of this study and was there any type of control, if possible? Also would this claim infer that 50% of women, in the past, had more nutritious meals than the other half causing a 50/50 in the sexes? There are just so many unanswered questions within this story. I would assume that some mothers are buying up all the “cherrios” but to me this so stupid…like you said let nature do her thing.
AprilN · April 29, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Although this is interesting, I find this information tough to believe, mainly because I’ve always been taught that the male chromosome determine the baby. I have also heard many different things about how to influence the sex of the baby, including the position during conception.
This information is interesting to read, but I think that this needs to be studied much more before people start stocking up on certain foods. People are better off letting nature do her thing, and be happy with what you get.
A_Jolly · May 4, 2008 at 6:55 pm
I too recently heard about this through word of mouth. I heard it was specifically potassium. Interesting for me because I was in Tahiti a week prior to my conception and I practically lived on bananas alone because food was so expensive. Also, I am a serious cereal feind, I eat it twice a day. And yes, I did give birth to a boy. I guess you could say that I am in the 56%. I’m a believer in this research. It makes sense that nutrients could change your body chemistry so that the egg would excepy a Y chrom rather than an X. This may natural selection. A healthier mother will give birth to a healthier child and males need to be strong because they are the hunters!
hvitullo · May 5, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I think that this article was probably taken too literally by women all over the country. It is silly to think that you can determine the sex of your baby with absolute certainty based on the foods you eat. I do not think that you should be able to choose the sex of your baby and all the work that is going into getting closer to that ability is somewhat scary to me. Nature does a pretty good job with the baby thing so we should just let it be!
kara311 · May 6, 2008 at 7:32 pm
These studies anger me. I just took a women’s studies course and we spent weeks discussing all of the horrible fates women in certain developing countries must suffer for baring a female child. This is such BS – we know the Y chromosome determines the sex. I am honestly sick of studies that try and target women for baring the “wrong” sex child. Women have had to pay the price of this misconception for centuries. Let them eat their breakfasts in peace!!
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