Breakfast Cereal Changes Baby’s Sex?

Break Fast Cereal Changes Baby’s Sex?

Future Moms Can Choose the Baby’s Sex
New study reported by msnbc (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24262928/) says that a women's diet at the time she becomes pregnant can influence a baby's sex. Better nutrition and eating habits could assist with a mother-to-be’s desire for a boy or a girl.
Mothers can use nutrition to make designer babies. At least one mother agrees that the study supports teachings women in her family have followed for generations.
“If a woman wants to conceive a boy, everyone knows she should eat more meat and other high-protein foods, as well as foods rich in potassium, vitamins and salt.”, said Jessica McCurdy Crooks.
When Crooks, 43, decided to become pregnant, she adapted her vegetarian diet to include more beans, peas and salty foods in hopes of conceiving her son, Jalen, now 3.
“I ended up having a soft spot for boys,” said Crooks, who raised four brothers. “And I had a boy."
The study contends that mothers-to-be who skip breakfast and eat less are more likely to give birth to girls, while moms who consume more calories and a wider range of nutrients — including, specifically, those from breakfast cereal — are more likely to deliver sons.
Researchers from the universities of Exeter and Oxford in England asked 740 first-time moms in the United Kingdom to keep food diaries before and during early pregnancy. The women didn’t know the sex of their babies, but when researchers reviewed their food plans, they found that moms who consumed more calories of higher quality before conceiving were about 24 percent more likely to give birth to boys than moms who ate less.
Mothers of boys consumed an average of 2,413 calories a day before conception and higher amounts of foods containing potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12, the researchers said. Women who had girls logged 2,283 calories a day and less protein, vitamins and minerals.
Fifty-six percent of women in the group with the highest energy intake gave birth to boys, compared to 45 percent in the group with the lowest energy consumption, according to the study.
Odds of having a boy were much higher for women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal a day compared to women who ate less than one bowl a week, the study said. Breakfast cereals are usually fortified by vitamins and minerals.
Diet trends may explain fewer boys
In addition to suggesting that breakfast cereal may produce more boys, the researchers said that nutrition and diet trends may account for an incremental decline in male births in developing nations. Over the last 40 years, births of boys have also dropped by about 1 per 1000 births annually in the United States, the U.K. and Canada, they said. At the same time, many young women in those developed nations have begun skipping breakfast and eating poorer-quality diets.
“This research may help explain why, in developed countries, where many young women choose to have low-calorie diets, the proportion of boys born is falling,” Mathews said.
That's counter to the trend in countries such as India, Vietnam and China, where births of boys now outpace girls because parents selective sex techniques, including abortion, to obtain highly prized sons.