Well, it turns out that little girls are not made of sugar and spice and all things nice after all. They are made of broccoli.

Now, it's very likely that if you are a little boy you will want to leave it right there, but if you are one of those people made of broccoli you will demand an explanation.

OK, will it help if I tell you that boys are indeed made of rats and snails and puppy dog's tails? No, I didn't think so. You will probably want to restrict male ingredients to rats and snails only. This makes sense because puppy dog's tails are cute, right?

Anyway, I know that if I'm not very careful I will alienate both the broccoli and the rats and snails. Bad things always happen to the bearer of bad tidings -- especially if the tidings are true.

The truth is that an almost forgotten British study, which is still being touted by Vega, tells us how diet affects the health of new mothers and finds that vegetarian women are more likely to have girls than boys.

So you see, girl babies are made mostly of broccoli -- and possibly a few carrots and perhaps, half a pound of Brussel sprouts -- although I always think of them as delectable strawberries and peaches and ... but that's just me -- and, oh yeah, every other man in the universe.

Pauline Hudson, a midwife teacher, and co-author Rosemary Buckley monitored 5,942 women at Nottingham City Hospital in England, and found "significant differences in the sex of babies born to meat- and vegetarian-eating women."

Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember that there have always been significant differences between the sexes. If this is something new in Nottingham, I'm glad I spent my younger years elsewhere.

And this is probably why Robin Hood spent his time swinging through trees in Nottingham Forest instead of hanging out in singles bars.

Still we can't argue with statistics, can we? They show that the birth ratio in Britain is that for every 106 boys born there are 100 girls. This means that, unless there is a lot of sharing going on, there must be around 1.5 million boys without a woman in Britain right now.

It seems that 106 boys for every 100 girls is pretty constant. But this was not so in the sample group of vegetarians where there were 81.5 boys born for every 100 girls. So there we have a great reversal that gives us around 3.5 million girls without a man.

And here we have a situation where, before long, we might find women desperately chomping on five-pound steaks so that there will be more men around while men will be plying them with broccoli. "Come on my dear, eat your veggies. You don't want to have one of those horrible things made of rats and snails, do you?"

According to the study, previous findings have shown that diets high in potassium, calcium and magnesium will produce more male births.

Well, it seems to me that, if nothing else, this diet could be a great way to reduce the number of male smokers in the population.

I mean if they light up around all that magnesium and potassium there could soon be signs warning: "This is a no-exploding area." Men who want to explode will have to do it at designated exploding areas or try to give it up by chewing firecrackers. Either way it will keep male non-smokers happy because it might reduce the competition.

It's true that having men explode might create a certain ambivalence in Nottingham where they are still looking for the difference, but anything that helps reduce the male population is likely to be popular with those broccoli eaters who have concluded from personal experience that nature had it right in the first place.

Anyway, it seems to me that all this disparity between the numbers of boy and girl babies has come about because of unhealthy and disordered, modern dietary habits. Cavemen didn't seem to have these problems and they ate lots of vegetables.

In spite of a largely, girl-producing, vegetarian diet there were always plenty of highly intelligent men to fight each other to the death for no apparent reason, and club their woman into submission just as she was about to purr, "Let's go to your place honey."

Personally, I believe that this outrageous behavior was simply because rugby football and grand slam wrestling had yet to exert their civilizing influence on the human race.

Later it would be understood that a civilized caveman will wait until his partner regains consciousness before whispering, "Was it ...." Anyway a woman would sometimes reply, "Here, let me put your club away for you." At this point, some foolish men would simply turn their backs and grunt, "OK," and this would unwittingly ensure the survival of only the smartest men, who have now evolved into the sneaky and devious creatures you see today. Darwin missed that step, right?

Anyway, according to James V. Neel, a geneticist at Michigan State University, here are some of the ingredients that represent a Stone Age diet: 1.5 cups of garbanzo beans and half a cup of red onions, chopped or in rings.

Oh, yeah? So what happened to all those dinosaurs, huh? Not one was ever found with any meat left on its bones right? Still, I guess, whichever theory is true it's not really surprising that cavemen carried a club, is it?

Still, on the bright side, no one mentioned any bad effects from pizza, french fries and meatball sandwiches, did they?

And when you think about it, this is probably the only way men stay happy in Nottingham. I mean, what's the difference? Well, what have I been saying? In Nottingham, no one knows, right?

Anthony Cicale is a Lemoore resident. His column appears weekly in The Sentinel. Readers can write him at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232 or e-mail anthonycicale@hotmail.com.