Attention female vegans (and no, I’m not soliciting romance, thanks): If you’re dreaming of birthing twins, you may want to read this.
Women who eat a vegan diet — a strict vegetarian diet that excludes all animal products including milk — are one-fifth as likely as other women to have twins, a U.S. researcher reported on Saturday.
But despite what some headline-writers suggest (“Vegan diet lowers odds of having twins” and “Meat-Eaters More Likely to Have Twins?“), neither meat-eating nor even necessarily veganness seem to be the key.
The reason [for the vegan twin-birth difference] may be hormones given to cattle to boost their milk and meat production, said Dr. Gary Steinman, an obstetrician specializing in multiple-birth pregnancies at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York.
So if you vegans want to increase the likelihood of twins without disrupting your diet, seems you could maybe skip the dairy and just go right for the growth hormones. Yum.
