Vegetarian Mothers Have More Girls

[Guest guest]

I thought this article was interesting...

 

Vegetarian Mothers Have More Girls

 

 

Updated 11:26 AM ET August 9, 2000

LONDON (Reuters) - A British study of how diet affects the health of new

mothers and their babies produced the surprise finding that vegetarian women

are more likely to have girls, one of the report's authors said on Tuesday.

In what is thought to be the first study of its kind, researchers at

Nottingham University in central England found significant differences in

the sex of babies born to vegetarian and meat and fish-eating women.

 

" We were very surprised. It was just a fluke, this was something we were

never looking to find, " Pauline Hudson, one of the report's authors, told

Reuters.

 

" We were monitoring the health outcomes in vegetarian and non-vegetarian

mothers, looking at things like hemoglobin levels, which shows how much iron

the mother has in her blood, and birth weights. "

 

Hudson, a midwife teacher, and co-author Rosemary Buckley monitored the

5,942 pregnant women seen at Nottingham's City Hospital during 1998, logging

whether or not they were vegetarian -- defined as avoiding meat and fish --

when they were booked in.

 

Nearly five percent were vegetarian, a total of more than 250 women.

 

" The birth ratio in Britain is that for every 106 boys born there are 100

girls, that's pretty constant, " said Hudson. " In our sample group of

vegetarians there were 81.5 boys born for every 100 girls. "

 

To further test their surprise findings -- and increase the sample number to

what scientists call a " statistically significant " level -- the pair

extended their study for a further six months, looking just at the sex of

babies.

 

The results, covering around 150 more vegetarian women, were " just about

exactly the same " .

 

The study also found that vegetarian mothers were less likely to smoke

during pregnancy -- 10 percent did so, compared with 20 percent of

meat-eaters -- and more likely to breastfeed -- 80 percent against 60

percent.

 

These differences were attributed to the likelihood that a vegetarian and

health-conscious lifestyle tend to go together, and that some vegan mothers

choose to avoid bottled milk containing dairy products.

 

Previous studies have shown that diets high in potassium, calcium and

magnesium will produce more male births, but there is no evidence that a

vegetarian diet is low in these elements.

 

In an article outlining their findings in the British journal Practicing

Midwife, Hudson and Buckley suggest a further study could be carried out to

investigate whether the diet of fathers affects the sex of their children.

 

______________________

Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com