Abstract
Prenatal sex steroids play a vital role in the development of the whole organism, and therefore also the brain. Exposure of the fetus to testosterone seems to be of special importance both for typical development and pathology. The key factor impacting offspring development (including prenatal androgen levels) appears to be diet, both in terms of shortage and excessive intake of certain food products. Prenatal steroid levels are measured using the ratio of the lengths of the second and fourth fingers (2D:4D). So far, the digit ratio (2D:4D) has been shown to correlate negatively with prenatal testosterone and positively with prenatal estrogen. Numerous correlational studies found relationships between the 2D:4D phenotype and differences in magnitude of many psychological traits. Certain social and demographic variables also correlate with the digit ratio. The present paper offers a preliminary analysis of correlations between diet, prenatal hormones’ levels (established based on the digit ratio), and selected social variables. One of the findings is that countries with high meat consumption present the so-called masculine digit ratio, while countries with plant-based diets – a feminine digit ratio.
Highlights
Since the ground-breaking work on organizational vs. activational effects of hormones [1], a significant amount of accumulated data confirm the relationship between sexual dimorphism and fetal exposure to prenatal sex steroids [2,3,4,5]
The step of the analysis revealed that the clusters differed in the diet type and in terms of morphometric data, in this case, the digit ratio
Cluster 2 countries have average parameters for the clusters of interest, with sex-typical digit ratios. These findings show an important correlation between the type of diet and digit ratio distribution in a population
Summary
Since the ground-breaking work on organizational vs. activational effects of hormones [1], a significant amount of accumulated data confirm the relationship between sexual dimorphism (and differences in sexual characteristics within the same sex) and fetal exposure to prenatal sex steroids (prenatal estrogens and prenatal androgens) [2,3,4,5]. External factors are hypothesized to be the effects on the pregnant female of a variety of substances in her environment, such as industrial by-products and compounds of e.g., plant origin (phytohormones). Some of these substances can affect the hormonal balance of the mother and the fetus [9]. The key factor impacting offspring development (including the levels of prenatal androgens) appears to be diet, Food, Androgens, and Quality of Life both in terms of shortage and excessive intake of certain products [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. A probable relationship between national dietary profiles and digit ratio patterns is the focus of attention in the present article
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