Can it be? Is it possible to decide whether you are going to have a boy or a girl simply based on the food you eat?
The answer may surprise you…
Science has known for a long, long, long time that male sperm determines a baby’s gender. Here’s how it works:
Chromosomes are long, stringy aggregates of genes that carry hereditary information. They are composed of DNA and proteins and are located within the nucleus of our cells. Chromosomes determine everything from hair color and eye color to gender. Whether you are a male or female depends on the presence or absence of certain chromosomes.
Human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes for a total of 46, two of which are sex chromosomes. The sex chromosomes are the X chromosome and the Y chromosome. The combination of these chromosomes determines whether you are male or female.
Here’s how: The female egg only has one kind of sex chromosome, the “X”… The male sperm carries either the “X” or the “Y” chromosome.
If the male’s “X” pairs with the female’s “X” – a female is produced. If the males “Y” pairs with the females “X” – a male is produced. In other words…“XX” is a female and “XY” is a male.

So what does all this have to do with the food you eat determining the gender of your baby?
Here’s what: A new study has shown that having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seem to raise the odds of having a boy!
This British study is the first to show a link (in humans) between a woman’s diet and whether she has a male or female child.
University of Exeter researcher Fiona Mathews, the study's lead author, said 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.
Dr. Tarun Jain, fertility specialist at The University of Illinois at Chicago, said he was skeptical when he first heard about the research. But he said the study was well-done and merits follow-up study to see if the theory proves true.
It's not necessarily as far-fetched as it sounds. While men's sperm determines a baby's gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women's bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the Y chromosome, Jain said.
"It's an interesting question. I'm not aware of anyone else looking at it in this manner," he said.
The Facts…

The study was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British medical journal.
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 percent had boys, versus 45 percent of the women with the lowest calorie intake.
Women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87 percent 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, Mathews said.
Compared with the women who had girls, those who had boys ate an additional 300 milligrams of potassium daily on average, "which links quite nicely with the old wives' tale that if you eat bananas you'll have a boy," Mathews said.
She added, women who had boys also ate about 400 calories more daily than those who had girls, on average.
Don’t Overeat Or Starve Yourself!!!
But be careful. This is NOT advice to over eat or starve your self to try to have either a boy or girl.
Both are not healthy and can be harmful to both you and your baby.
In fact, the study results reflect women at opposite ends of a normal eating pattern, not those with extreme habits, Mathews said.
Professor Stuart West of the University of Edinburgh said the results echo research in some animals.
Since Boys Are Bigger…
And Dr. Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and public health at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the results "are certainly plausible from an evolutionary biology perspective." In other words, since boys tend to be bigger, it would make sense that it would take more calories to create them, Lu said.
In The End…We Still Don’t Know!
Still, Lu said a woman's diet before pregnancy may be a marker for other factors in their lives that could influence their baby's gender, including timing of intercourse.
"The bottom line is, we still don't know how to advise patients in how to make boys," he said.