Researchers at Exter and Oxford in the UK have just published a study about the importance of having a good breakfast (see NYT article here). That is if you’d like to have a baby boy. It seems that having a high calorie breakfast can increase the odds of having a boy, regardless of the weight status of the mother. From an evolutionary perspective this of course makes a lot of sense since signs of increased nutrition are important since baby boys need more calories to survive.

In Survival of the Sickest I talked about a situation where a significant increase in short term stress occurred, such as right after the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in 1995 can skew the birth rate towards females. From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense, since increased in perceived environmental stress can signal that it may not be the most opportune time for boys, since they can be more expensive calorically to maintain.