Nutri-eugenics

Clothes make the man, but what makes a boy? Cereal and bananas.

According to new research, what a woman eats before pregnancy influences the gender of her baby. Having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seemed to raise the odds of having a boy. The British research is billed as the first in humans to show a link between a woman's diet and whether she has a boy or girl.

Though it is not proof, it fits with evidence from test tube fertilization that male embryos thrive best with longer exposure to nutrient-rich lab cultures. The findings also fit with fertility research showing that male embryos aren't likely to survive in lab cultures with low sugar levels. Skipping meals can result in low blood sugar levels. While men's sperm determine a baby's gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women's bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the male chromosome.

The research involved about 700 first-time pregnant women in the United Kingdom who didn't know the sex of their fetuses. They were asked about their eating habits in the year before getting pregnant. Among women with the highest calorie intake before pregnancy (but still within a normal, healthy range), 56% had boys, versus 45%of the women with the lowest calorie intake (again, wonky stats with 101% total, but that's science). Women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87%more likely to have boys than those who ate no more than one bowlful per week. Cereal is a typical breakfast in Britain and in the study, eating very little cereal was considered a possible sign of skipping breakfast.

Compared with the women who had girls, those who had boys ate an additional 300 milligrams of potassium daily on average, giving credence to the old wives' tale that if you eat bananas you'll have a boy. Women who had boys also ate about 400 calories more daily than those who had girls, on average.

This research is silent on the circumstances that created Lake Bell.

on the red carpet for Dude, Where's My Floral Arrangement