Lucky Charms=Baby Boy?
By Glinda
According to a study out of the Universitites of Exeter and Oxford, it was found that women who ate a hearty, healthy breakfast were more likely to conceive a son.
In a rather stunning development, women who ate at least one bowl of cereal per day pre-conception were found to have the most male babies. Although cereal contains quite a few nutrients, it frightens me that a food which is completely engineered and bears no resemblance to anything in nature should be the key to having a boy.
Suspicious that some sort of cereal company was underwriting the study, I tried, but could find no evidence of shenanigans.
Women who skipped breakfast or ate a breakfast which was low in nutritional value had more girls.
Now does this study demonstrate yet again the superiority of the female sex, or what? When the going gets rough, it’s the girls who come through. But the boys? Oh no, conditions have to be perfect or they won’t even bother showing up for the party.
I’m trying to remember if I ate a lot of cereal before I got pregnant, although I have to admit that I had a “surprise” pregnancy and thus didn’t even know that I was pregnant until over a month and a half later. So goodness knows what I was putting in my body. I know that I certainly wasn’t making any extra effort to eat healthy, nor did pre-natal vitamins pass my lips until the pregnancy was confirmed.
But hey, if you’re a big fan of Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes, or Fruit Loops and you want a boy, then by all means, chow down!
April 24th, 2008 at 8:11 am
What?! A baby’s sex is determined by the man.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Hm. That is intriguing, but I wonder if it’s a case of correalation vs. causation. The gender IS determined by the male, but sometimes, conditions in the woman’s body can make the female reproductive system more hospitable to XY sperm or XX sperm. For example, XY sperm tend to be faster, but XX sperm tend to have more endurance. Thus, to increase one’s odds of having a girl, it is evidently better to have sex a few days prior to conception. That way, by the time the egg arrives, the XY sperm will have mostly pooped out of the race. As well, XY sperm survive better in a slightly alkaline environment. It could be that there is something in the cereal that naturally increases the alkalinity of the woman’s lady-bits.
At any rate, it’s one hell of a conversation starter.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:47 am
I was reading this too! Of course, I was desperately trying to figure out what I ate pre-pregnancy but like you both my boys were surprises.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Shoot! Well now I know what to do when I want to try for another kid.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:09 am
From what I read it sounded as though the increase in chance of a boy was fairly small, overall. Also, I would reiterate what La Petite Acadienne said: it’s hard to tell from what I’ve seen whether this is a case of causation or correlation.
Overall, it looks like an interesting baby step (pun intended) in learning the mysteries of human conception rather than a direct recipe for having a boy. I look forward to seeing further studies and learning more.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I think the occurence was ten percent higher, but the study was a respectably large. It wasn’t like it was only 100 women, it was 740.
While I don’t think that eating a bowl of Lucky Charms every day will ensure a boy, the authors of the study seem to believe that the diet is cause. But, they are the authors, after all. I didn’t get a good look at the acutal study, just the blurb, so perhaps I should go look at the numbers a bit more closely.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I typically don’t eat breakfast at all. Occassionally on the weekends, if it occurs late enough in the morning hours I will indulge in a hearty eggs, sausage toast etc breakfast, but on the average everyday morning it’s just coffee. I have two boys. Go figure.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Maybe they meant oatmeal? or the milk? If I would read the article, I might find out, but I’m too lazy.
I love Captain Crunch, but it’s dessert, not breakfast.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
So what do you eat to get a grown-up boy in your life? GET Lucky Charms?
April 28th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
La Petite Acadienne, I have to agree, sort of. I think if you want a child of either gender, it helps to have sex a few days before conception!
I think, however, that if one is having a low-nutrition breakfast habitually, the body is under the impression that environmental conditions aren’t good, and food is in short supply. Girl babies survive harsh conditions better than boy babies, and the species needs more girls than it does boys if environmental conditions are difficult. It doesn’t surprise me particularly that nutrition has an effect on the reproductive system.