One of my customers told me she was relieved to be able to buy my pasture-raised, natural beef because she was concerned that feeding “hormone-laden grocery store beef” would cause early puberty in her daughter. Don’t get me wrong–I really like people to be enthusiastic about locally raised, quality agricultural products (especially mine!), but I hate to see other ag products shouldering disproportional blame.

The Breast Cancer Fund published an excellent report on the falling age of puberty in girls. Why should we should be concerned? For one thing, early onset of puberty is a risk factor for breast cancer as well as other physical and psycho-social problems. I believe it is also an indicator of other non-beneficial physical and emotional changes brought about by our rapidly changing lifestyles.

Here are the primary risks identified in the report:

• Obesity/overweight is the biggest and most consistently identified risk factor; childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years;
• Environmental chemical exposures- some of the prime suspects are chemicals leaching from plastic drink bottles and other canned food linings;
• Television/media use and exposure – the sexualized content, increased inactivity and brain chemical changes;
• Lack of exercise in and of itself and as a contributing factor to obesity and stress;
• Familial dysfunction and father-absence;
• Low birth-weight, premature birth and formula feeding.

If you have concerns about early puberty, the best thing you can do for your kids is to give them a healthy lifestyle including a balanced diet full of fresh produce and non-processed foods, exercise, time outdoors, and a stress-reduced family life. Breastfeed your babies, minimize the use (and re-use) of plastic drink bottles. By all means, exercise your freedom of choice in purchasing unprocessed, natural, organic or locally grown foods. But, if you’re looking for shoulders on which to place the blame for early puberty, most of them aren’t on a cow.

1. Dawn Says:
   October 2nd, 2007 at 9:36pm

   I find this interesting for several reasons. The biggest, obviously, being I am the mom to a 10 yr old girl. =) While I agree that removal of additives from your child’s beef meals can hardly be called a ’solution’, I do think the animal food industry as a whole is likely responsible for a statistically significant portion of the lowering of the average onset of puberty. The hormones in other products such as the dairy parents are encouraged to give their kids (good to a degree but to the minimization of water is a concern, imo)in addition to the fact the chemicals in many plastics, cleaning products, and hygiene/cosmetic products being hormone disrupting/stimulating, and many exhibiting residual cellular build-up go a long way towards affecting/triggering the obesity in our country. Add to that our lovely stress-obsessed society and vomit-box (to quote my mother) addiction and we’ve set ourselves up for a mighty, mighty fall I fear.

   While I can quote others and studies for days, my biggest influence has come from watching my daughter. As a lactose intolerant child and my own medical condition preventing breast feeding, she was on soy formula as an infant. After a 6 mos trial on cow’s milk, she returned to soy and has remained there. She is also a self-chosen vegetarian (neither my husband nor I are) for the past 2 yrs and has always eaten primarily organic, unprocessed and frequently local food. She is consistently of slighter build, larger appetite, and physically showing fewer to no signs of puberty commonly seen in her peers.

   I agree with you on the major point, though, Sara! It’s not the beef - its cumulative and it’s many, many things. Don’t fault the cow, put the weight of responsibility on the culture that encourages us to remain uneducated and encourages ‘easy’ over knowing what you’re eating/using!



2. Sara Says:
   October 3rd, 2007 at 2:03pm

   Dawn: Thanks for the comments. Our world and our health is indeed an interconnected web. There is a lot of information, misinformation, ignorance and people looking for a one-shot answer. It just doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.
   I tend to look to science for judgments on the accuracy of statements and claims, but admit that mainstream science is not always eager to investigate some of the issues. Again-no one-shot answers!
   Here’s a question I have yet to investigate: Soybeans (and other legumes) are incredibly high in naturally occurring plant estrogens. When I raised sheep, we were warned about using too much alfalfa, soy and cottonseed in our breeding and pregnant ewes. Now, many people are using soy as an alternative to dairy. Are those soy estrogens any more or less harmful or prevalent? Sounds like a blog topic for the future to me…



3. Meredith Says:
   October 23rd, 2007 at 7:15pm

   I both agree and disagree. About three months after our daughter started cow’s milk (around a year old), we noticed some developmental changes that should not have been happening. We couldn’t figure out what it might be, but decided to start with the most recent change in her diet (the milk). We switched to organic milk and within 2-3 months the new developments went away. She looked like a normal one year old again.

   Being only a year old, she really didn’t watch TV, got plenty of exercise by just simply walking and practicing running, playing outside, etc. Obesity wasn’t even a question (and still isn’t). She’s a very petite little girl (compared to others her age). She’s now almost 6 years old and we’ve never gone back to plain ol’ milk. We’ve stuck to the organic, no matter the cost, because we saw the changes in her physical appearance at such an early age.

   If milk can do that (and we assumed that it was because of the hormones and additives in the milk), then other items can cause the same problem as well.

   I agree that it could be a multitude of items that can cause early puberty, but I think a large part of it is the hormones and additives put in the food we buy from the grocery store. I believe that the more we buy from local farmers, or even buying organic produce or growing your own (which we’ve done) can help reduce onset of early puberty.

   I’ve seen what it can do, even when my daughter was only a year old. It’s scary to think about what could have happened if we kept her on the plain ol’ milk all these years.



4. Food Choices in the Real World | Down to Earth - Safety in Food Production Says:
   July 30th, 2008 at 1:00pm

   […] aren’t vegetarians). I find it equally dismaying to hear people blaming beef or milk for early onset of puberty (studies show the leading causes have nothing to do with […]