Everyone knows that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but a new app now claims to leverage dietary science to help prospective parents conceive a girl.

But why? Although parents from most world cultures overwhelmingly prefer boys, American couples seeking fertility treatment tend to choose girls — for whatever reason. Now a software developer claims his new app, StorkDiet/Girl, can help these couples conceive a little Ashley, Emily, Madison, or Karsyn.

DietStork/Girl Promises Help Conceiving A Girl
Parents hoping to conceive a girl might consider dietary choices associated with the likelihood of conceiving a girl or boy. Screenshot

Alain Hanash says he based the app on recent research from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford that found an association between maternal diet and sex selection. In that study, investigators following 740 first-time mothers found that women who consumed less sodium and calcium — and fewer calories overall — were more likely to conceive a girl. Some 56 percent of women who adhered to the “girl” diet successfully conceived a girl, study leader Fiona Matthews wrote in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Thus, the app recommends a nine-week diet rich in foods based on that research, drawing from a built-in database covering more than 8,400 food items. “This natural and scientific method consists of a nine-week diet and conception timing program and has shown to achieve a success rate of 81 percent,” Hanash says on his website.

Researchers say a small but steady decline in male birth proportion during the past 40 years might be attributable to population-wide dietary changes as more women skip breakfast on their way to work.