Women can influence the gender of their child with what they eat before they conceive, according to new research that lends scientific support to age-old superstitions about pregnancy. The study of 740 women showed that higher calorie intake led to a higher probability of a male birth.
The discovery shows higher calorie intake prior to conception can significantly increase the chances of having a son while women on restricted diets are more likely to produce daughters. Scientists at Britain’s Oxford and Exeter Universities, who studied eating habits of 740 women during their first-time pregnancies, say that their findings seem to back certain traditional links between diet and gender while disproving others.

"We were able to confirm the old wives’ tale that eating bananas and so having a high potassium intake was associated with having a boy, as was a high sodium intake,” research leader Fiona Mathews, a specialist in mammalian biology at Exeter University, told the Guardian newspaper. "But the old take about drinking a lot of milk to have a girl doesn’t seem to hold up. In fact, more calcium meant they were again more likely to have a boy.”

Source: edition.cnn.Com