Early Puberty Info

If you follow the news at all you probably have heard the latest research on the age puberty dropping significantly in girls. And although it is the overweight young girls who are most at risk for menstruation cycles and bras at the scary age of seven or eight, their healthy weight peers are only buying themselves a few years more (ten, eleven is still really young). As a mother of a young girl this utterly FREAKS me out.

It is widely known that our meats and dairy are pumped up with growth hormones to speed up sexual maturation.  I recently read that an organic chicken will be slaughtered at 14 weeks where as a non organic raised chicken will be slaughtered at 6 weeks. Why the 8 week difference? The non-organic chicken is literally pumped continually with hormones to make it mature more than twice as fast than its natural rate. Those hormones do not leave the meat when the meat is slaughtered, nor do they leave the meat when you cook it. Milk cows, and egg laying hens are by no means spared of the growth hormones-a cow can't produce milk, and a chicken can't produce eggs until they become sexually mature.

In fairness, to date there has not been any significant data to link early puberty with growth hormones. Is this surprising? Not at all! The food industry would loose MILLIONS of dollars if growth hormones were banded. Growth hormones quicken their turn around time, as well as keep prices down in the grocery store. Why is organic so much more expensive? The animal is in a non profit making state for more than twice as long. In the words of my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Jane Townsend, "Money is Power." How long did it take for significant research to link lung cancer with cigarettes?

However, the nice thing about growth hormones is we have some choices in what we buy. You can buy organic meats, and you can buy organic dairy. And if you shop at Trader Joe's you can buy non organic dairy that "Just says no" to all drugs. Tillamook cheese and dairy also does not use growth hormones or antibiotics in their dairy cows. Hmm, antibiotics that will need to be covered in another post.

In the New York Times article I read about the new lowered puberty age the author mentioned a few times that "additives or chemicals that mimic estrogen" may be a factor in causing this lowered onset of puberty. I had to smile at such an elusive statement, for what would happen if the wonder product of soy was found out?

I really don't have a huge problem with soy. Most soy is genetically modified, but so is like 90% of all corn and canola-but more on that latter.  And I am a 100% on board with soy for bio-diesel fuel, and I do not disagree with some of the health benefits that soy can bring.

My problem with soy is that SOY MIMICS ESTROGEN!. This is nothing new, it has long been known that soy proteins contain isoflavones and isoflavones mimic estrogen by binding to estrogen receptors and triggering cell actions that are similar to estrogen. This estrogen effect is about 1,000 times weaker than what your body naturally produces, so soy in small quantities should have very little effect.

Ok, you are probably thinking "But I don't even really eat soy. It is not like we are a country that is only feeding our daughters Smart Dogs and Morning Star sausage." What is the big deal?

But that is just it, we are not a low soy consuming country. EVERYTHING contains soy lecithin, just open up your cupboard and start reading the ingredients on your food. Soy lecithin is used as a binder in processed foods. In other words it is used instead of eggs. It is the byproduct or waste material of soy beans when making soy oil. It is the color of dark sludge, but bleached until it is a golden red.  What is worse most soy crops are genetically modified (Monsanto GMO) crops  that have a gene inserted into them allowing them to be sprayed more often with herbicides-basically the opposite of organic. But that is neither here nor there on the puberty topic.

Again, to be fair different soy products have different levels of isoflavone (soy flour having some of the highest). From what I gather soy lecithin is on the lower end of isoflavene levels, but again it is in high quantities in our diet.  Moreover, how many of the labels in your cupboard have other soy ingredients? Soy flour? Soy protein? Soy is the cheapest crop to grow in the US so soy is in everything. Soy lecithin is the cheapest binder a food processors can use, plus it is toted as a health food.

Talk about an economic impact if soy uses were to be restricted! It may be a long time in coming to get some significant data against soy. But I am not going to risk my little girls innocence waiting on that data.
In our house our goal is to reduce our soy intake as much as possible, read every label  and remind myself that a small dose is ok. We have been buying organic meats and dairy for years now and will continue to do so. Soy and hormones aren't the only factors in the lowered puberty age (remember the BPA thing a couple years ago?) but our goal is to provide as much of a toxic, chemical, hormone free home as possible for our little girl. We can't control everything so the things we can control we aren't going to turn away from.