Human reproduction

Sugar and spice...


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Readers' comments




This is old and not "news" at all. As with much academic research, after thirty or forty years much is repeated.My wife had difficulty in conceiving and thirty years ago (before ready access to subsidized in vitro fertilisation), we attended courses given by the researchers at Sydney University. There the many aspects of human reproduction were studied and explained to us and a methodology suited to our condition was designed. Whilst timing (and many other) methods were the primary tools the importance of diet in conception was emphasised.This study group's methodologies consistently moved the male birth ratio from 51 : 49 to 55 : 45 - or the reverse, for parents who were desperate to define the sex of their next child. This was not done as an aim of the physicians, but happened as parents used the information supplied for their own ends.


Mechanism how gender bias is made in mammals was described recently. High glucose levels selectively kill female embryos.

Dan Tits

Agree with gghhgg - It's an old cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Though, the picture in the actual magazine, below the article and comment are brilliant.


I'm surprised that there was no link found between obesity and having males. Wouldn't being fat be indicative of a high glucose content...or is it that obesity is primarily caused by the body's inability to detect high fructose corn syrup. Does fructose have the same effect as glucose? Sorry this article left a bunch of questions unanswered if anyone knows the answers please share

Ms cherry

so magic is unimaginable to think of relationship between birth sex and normal chinese traditional view,it is likely to have a boy for the woman favoring sour food whereas a girl when the ones are fond of hot food.Maybe there is any chance to be true.

cheng bonnie

It sounds so interesting.I'll talk to my friends who want to have a boy about that,although i am not so sure about the statement.They will be so glad to hear that.

Frank Lowther

It is hard to posit a mechanism whereby the mother's nutritional intake has an effect on whether her egg is fertilized by a y-chromosome or x-chromosome sperm, but the
reproductive process is hardly that simple. It's far more than egg plus sperm equals zygote and zygote plus nine months equals baby.

Much more plausible is that the maternal nutritional environment has an impact on the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine lining, or (even more likely) on
the probability that the uterine lining is retained and the menstrual cycle broken. It would be worth examining whether (once all other factors are controlled for) the lower caloric intake mothers had a lower overall birth rate. Perhaps there is a mechanism to increase the probability of the uterine lining being sloughed off, and pregnancy spontaneously terminated, when a y-chromosome zygote is present for the lower caloric intake mothers.


Sir,Your reports about human ecology tend to be bad.Perhaps the diet can make 10% difference in ratio of boys to girls. But this is too weak to suggest that prospective mother hoping for a child of given sex can make a real difference by changing her diet.Not to mention many methodological flaws. One is lack of cross-cultural comparison. If this mechanism were real, then why in countries where serious food shortages are commonplace, gender ratio of newborns is not really incredibly skewed towards girls?

Im Tony Burns

If this is so, there should be a noticeable increase in Jewish daughters nine months after Passover, which is ironic given the dearth of male competition in the Land of kings after the original Passover.



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