To: cty, zhejiang, china

Never a more ridiculous statement made. Most people in Africa eat high protein diets, meat etc. Vegetables, carbs etc don't rank high on the menu. Which is why the women are very shapely and curvaceous. There are more girls than boys on the continent roughly 5% more...

Christie, Accra,

If you want a boy, eat a healthy diet with a high calorie intake, including breakfast,
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this is ridiculous, if that so, Africa would already be the women's kingdom ,and western countries would full of bachelors

cty, zhejiang, china

Bologna! Oops, does that mean I'll have a boy?

Beth, St. Petersburg, USA

I know of an old wives' tale from Croatia which says that If you are expecting a boy you will crave heavy foods and it's the oposite if you've got a girl. Nothing to do with messing with the foetus gender, which is ruled by genetics anyway, but about finding the sex before the arrival of scans.

Raquel, Brentwood, UK

Well, from what I learned in college, the sex is determined by the male so how does a woman's diet affect that?

Hayley, Loveland, USA

Same goes for me. I was eating very little and had two boys. With the girl I was eating 4 or five small meals a day.

Susan Loving, Nacogdoches, USA

Chalk it up for one more crazy scientific "correlation" being passed off as "fact." This reminds me of nineteenth century anthropologists who claimed women were less intelligent because their skulls were smaller! These claims are both dangerous to the fetus and sexist!

Lisa, monmouth, USA

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2008/080423.html

Correlation does not equal causation. I wish that 'scientists' would acknowledge this when reporting their findings and stop sensationalising their conclusions just to get published, especially in the popular mass media.

JS, Brighton, UK

Well, that did not hold true for me. I was dieting (not eating is how I dieted back then) when I became pregnant, both the first and second time. I have 2 sons - 28 and 23.

Pat, Hillsdale, USA

Perhaps the diet effects which sperm are more likely to be able to make it to the egg, The sperm are different between male and female sperm.

Nicholas, Denver, USA

How can the egg select the gender if the egg develops years prior to the fertilization?

Nikki, Cleveland, Ohio,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the child's sex be determined at the moment of conception based on the sex chromosome of the sperm?

Rob, Rockville, MD,

There is a diet program that influences gender of the baby: www.boygirldiet.com. Excellent program with high success rates!

Chile, Maine,

The link of whether the sex of your baby determines your appetite seems to have been overlooked. Were only girls born during times of rationing in the wars???

sarah, newcastle,

These statistical results seem very misleading. They make assumptions that are not scientifically based. The claim from this study was with regards breakfast cereal, but that does not conclude anything about calories and does not even mention milk maybe having an effect. These claims are spurious.

Clare, Cambridge, UK

If that were true, there'd hardly be any girls born in the USA today.

Stan, Las Vegas, USA

It seems like it would be fairly straightforward to test this theory by comparing the rise in obesity to male/female birthrates over the last 30 years.

Shawn, Louisville,

just because victoria beckham isn't fat doesn't mean that she didn't have a high calorie intake during her pregnancy. other factors include a high metabolism and exercise.

Greg Burnett, Huntingdon (H-City), USA BABY!

I am skeptical about the results. If the results were valid, then in nations with lots of food, nearly all the births should be boys and in poorer nations nearly all the births would be females.

Richard Schroeder, San Diego, USA

Here's just a layperson's thought: Maybe nature (wow, what a concept!) has a built-in fail-safe, if a woman's body detects less food intake, it could translate as 'famine conditions' and it would be more important to produce more females to continue propagating the species? Now give me a grant.

Mary, Los Angeles, USA

Article's title is misleading it should say
if you want to abort(miscarrage) a male fetus then
eat less (the diet doesn't affect conception.)

sean, orange, usa

there are definite mistakes in this study. for one, an overweight person, especially if his or her obesity is linked to leptin deficiencies, has a much LOWER fertility rate compared to normal weight individuals. i don't understand how any scientist can say that losing weight would decrease fertility

Eva, New York, USA

Mental Note - Ignore all studies coming out of Exeter University.

Jack, Renton,

As far as I know, in most cases only one sperm (carrying an X or Y chromosome) reaches the egg (carrying an X chromosome). It is these chromosomes that determine the baby's zex. If more than one sperm reaches the egg, the result is a multiple birth. No hormones are involved at this point.

Maggie Schweig, Lima, Peru

regarding the previous post about male sperm and sex:. Yes X and Y comes from the sperm, but that is irrelevant to the issue. Recent research points to the female's EGG as being the one that CHOOSES between several sperm candidates that arrive. So really the egg selects gender among other qualities

Zig, Lima, Peru

Since average calorific intake has increased markedly in the last 200 years, why are we not now overpopulated with boys?

fredo, los angeles, usa

One might just as easily conclude that a woman carrying a boy is more inclined to eat than one carrying a girl. Or that a woman carrying a girl is more inclined to lie to a researcher about what she eats, than one carrying a boy. And if 56% of women are overweight, shouldn't 56% of births be male?

Tim, Leeds, UK

Nitin, you're right that the study seems problematic. For example, if gorging produces more boys, why is the birth rate roughly 50-50 male-female, as it's been since we started measuring such things? Something's fishy.

Note, though--embryos die frequently. It's not just which chromosomes!

John Woods, Austin, TX, United States

Nitin is correct either the sperm has an X or a Y. Males produce equal amounts of both and the egg accepts both equally. It seems possible that diet may affect the egg's acceptance of one or the other but the diet change would need to happen before conception. plus results are not sig diff only 5%

Patrick, Chicago,

What the researchers should have concluded is that the sex of a child may have an affect on the mother's eating habits. How they mixed this one up I can't imagine.

joel, Albuquerque,

Yeah, we just dont want to know the cause and the effect, tell us the theory behind it, if any.Y ou can run a research and prove "statistically significantly" that having one cup of water between 7AM and 8AM reduced the risks of heart attack. But without thoery a statistical conclusion is baseless.

Kiran Gange, San Francisco, USA

seems like complete absurd from the point of view of science. The gender is determined by the X or Y chromosome that comes from the sperm. Egg always have X chromosome, its only sperm that can have either X or Y.
Seems like if 900 of 1000 people say 2+3 = 10, a researcher may conclude 2+3 may be 10

Nitin, Sunnyvale, US

"Victoria Beckham has three bonny boys and she seems clearly to contradict the study's findings."

All the research says is that it could possibly raise the PROBABILITY to have a boy, not entirely predict the outcome. You siting one anecdotal celebrity example proves nothing.

Jake, London,