Vegetarian diet increases likelihood of baby girls

LONDON - 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.

In what is thought to be the first study of its kind, researchers at Nottingham University found significant differences in the sex of babies born to vegetarian and meat and fish-eating women.

"We were very surprised. This was something we were never looking to find," said Pauline Hudson, one of the authors.

"We were monitoring the health outcomes in vegetarian and non-vegetarian mothers, looking at things like haemoglobin levels which show how much iron the mother has in her blood, and birth weights."

Pauline Hudson and co-author Rosemary Buckley monitored the 5942 pregnant women at Nottingham's City Hospital during 1998, logging, when they booked in, whether they avoided meat and fish.

Nearly 5 per cent 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 Pauline Hudson.

"In our sample group of vegetarians there were 81.5 boys born for every 100 girls."

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 "about exactly the same."

The study also found that just 10 per cent of vegetarian mothers smoked during pregnancy compared with 20 per cent of meat-eaters.

Previous studies have shown that diets high in potassium, calcium and magnesium produce more male births, but there is no evidence that a vegetarian diet lacks these elements.

- REUTERS