Boys and Breakfast

Recently I've been going to the BBC for my news. Today one of the headlines for their "Health" section was "High-calorie diet linked to boys".

According to the article, women who have higher-calorie, nutrient-rich diets around the time of conception and early pregnancy tend (56% of 740 first-time pregnancies studied) to have male children. This trend has been well-documented in other species (horses, cows, etc). There has been a slow, steady decline in the number of boy babies born in developing countries in the few decades.

The idea is that well-nourished mothers are more likely to live in favorable environments, environments that could support a whole bunch of babies. It makes sense, under these conditions, to have boy babies because boys could sire more babies than girls could mother...

The point of all this (for me) is that it is tremendously ironic that the cultural values and habits of the affluent (thin, well-managed women, preferably too busy to eat breakfast) would create conditions of scarcity within the individual (lean times, more girl-children).

Sorry to stray from cog sci, but intriguing things are intriguing things, and both nutrition and gender have interesting and significant effects on cognition, so this might relate to something more relevant later.

Also, for full article, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7358384.stm .