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1 February 2010 Maternal Preconception Diet and the Sex Ratio
J. S. Cramer, L. H. Lumey
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Abstract

Temporal variations in the sex ratio, or the ratio of boys to girls at birth, have been widely studied and variously attributed to social changes, conditions of war, and environmental changes. Recently, Mathews et al. [“You are what your mother eats: Evidence for maternal preconception diet influencing fetal sex in humans,” Proc. R. Soc. bond. B 275:1661–1668 (2008)] studied the direct evidence of individual pregnancies and established an association between the sex at birth and the mother's preconception diet. We examined the hypothesis using new evidence from the wartime famine in Holland in 1944–1945 and failed to show an association between maternal diet in pregnancy and the sex ratio. This makes a causal link highly improbable.

© 2010 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309
J. S. Cramer and L. H. Lumey "Maternal Preconception Diet and the Sex Ratio," Human Biology 82(1), 103-107, (1 February 2010). https://doi.org/10.3378/027.082.0106
Received: 1 July 2009; Accepted: 1 October 2009; Published: 1 February 2010
KEYWORDS
famine
HOLLAND
maternal diet
nutrition
sex ratio
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