Sex Selection

For some, it's the only real surprise left that is left in life; for others, it's a serious business which warrants almost military preparation. Whether you have a specific medical reason for wanting a particular gender of baby, whether you've got a houseful of girls and you want to throw a boy into the mix, or whether you're planning the perfect, balanced family, diet gives you a powerful tool to choose gender.

Boy or girl? The sex is yours to choose; gender specific diets for pregnant women are becoming increasingly popular as we develop a newly re-discovered interest in diet and natural health.

In order to choose gender, the diet should be adopted at least a couple of months before conception and followed well into pregnancy, when the gender of the fetus has already been determined. However, you should be careful not to abuse your privilege to choose; gender favoring diets do not replace the need that any pregnant mother and her unborn baby have for a balanced, nutritious diet.

Believe it or not, there are scientifically proven reasons which ground this ability to choose; gender is determined by body chemistry; diet affects that body chemistry. Your diet can actually change the internal pH value of your body. This pH value changes the acidity or alkalinity of a woman's vaginal secretions, and so the conditions in which the embryo grows. It's these secretions which help to choose gender.

Diet alone is not a guarantee of being able to choose; gender can be more complex than that. However, there are dietary principles which a pregnant woman - or indeed one wishing to conceive, can follow to significantly improve your chances of being able to choose gender in the unborn baby.

Baby Girl Diet If you are aiming to have a baby girl - select foods which are high in calcium and magnesium. Eggs and dairy products are very good - so you can also indulge in all that ice cream happily - and tell everyone that you're trying to have a baby girl!

Salt is a no-no if you want to increase your chances of conceiving a baby girl

In terms of vegetables, go for lots and lots of them, especially carrots and lettuce. Good fruits to help you choose gender and have a baby girl are tangerines, apples and grapefruits.

So perhaps you can see why vegetarians are for more likely to give birth to a baby boy rather than a girl.

Baby Boy Diet As you might expect stereotypically, a carnivorous and meat-heavy diet is more likely to help you conceive a baby boy. You should eat foods rich in sodium and potassium, like salted meat products and sausages and fish. Starchy foods like rice, potatoes and beans are also useful tools to help you choose gender and have a male baby.

Some fruits are useful for baby boy diet, though. Bananas most people know are high in potassium which is what you need to choose gender in favor of a baby boy. But peaches, apricots and melon are also good. Tomatoes and sweetcorn also tip the scales in favor of baby boys if you want to choose gender through diet.

So, while there are no guarantees that you can choose gender, these diets do have significant basis in scientific knowledge and they are worth giving a try if you are interested in the experiment - although you must be careful to make sure that through your diet, you take in all the vitamins minerals you need to maintain your health and have a healthy baby.