Mother's diet linked to sex of baby
Updated on 23 April 2008
What a woman eats around the time she conceives can influence whether she has a boy or a girl, researchers have said.
Experts said they had uncovered the first direct evidence that food intake is linked to a baby's gender.
Women who consume a lot of calories when trying for a baby are more likely to give birth to a son, experts from the University of Exeter and the University of Oxford said.
Women who ate around 2,200 calories a day were 1.5 times more likely to have a boy than those who ate less than 1,850 calories a day.
The eating of breakfast cereals before and around the time of conception was also "strongly associated" with women producing sons, the researchers said.
They worked out that women eating breakfast cereals were 1.89 times more likely to have a boy than those who did not consume them.
Diets high in a number of nutrients, including potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12, were also linked to male births.
The research focused on 740 first-time pregnant mothers in the UK, who did not know the sex of their foetus.
Nutritional data was collected for three time periods: usual intake before conception (preconception); intake at around 16 weeks' gestation (early pregnancy) and usual intake between 16 and 28 weeks' gestation (later pregnancy).
The results showed a link between food intake and gender around the time of preconception but not at other times in pregnancy.
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