A hearty breakfast laced with sugar appears to boost a woman's chances of giving birth to a son, a new study finds.

The odds of having a male baby also sharply increased for women who had at least one bowl of breakfast cereal each day compared to women who ate less than or equal to one bowl a week, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The study also found that a low-calorie diet is more likely to yield a girl baby, French news agency AFP reported.

The study was conducted by Fiona Mathews of the University of Exeter in Britain and colleagues. They asked 740 first-time mothers, who were unaware of the sex of their unborn babies, to provide detailed records of eating habits before and after they became pregnant.
The women were split into three groups according to the number of calories they consumed each day around the time of conception, AFP reported.

Fifty-six percent of the women in the group with the highest caloric intake had sons, compared to 45 percent in the low-calorie group.

Besides racking up a higher calorie count, members of the group that produced more males also were more likely to have eaten a wider range of nutrients, including potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12.

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