Not terribly long ago, my husband and I were driving alongside a local junior high school when we found ourselves stuck behind the stop sign of a crossing guard. The dismissal bell had just rung, and hundreds of kids were pouring out of the building and into the street. To my amazement, all the girls looked like they were wearing wonder bras under their skimpy tank tops, showing a cleavage I myself didn’t possess until after having my first child.
“Do you suppose they’ve had boob jobs?” asked my husband. “Either that, or they’ve been taking steroids,” I answered back. It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me that the reason for those voluptuous 13 and 14 year old figures might be due to the growth hormones being injected in dairy cattle to increase milk production.
According to our school nurse, early puberty has been on the increase in the United States for the past 20 years or so. She noted that American girls seem to be developing breasts at a much earlier age with some menstruating as early as third grade. And it gets worse. Along with this early puberty was the added problem of sexual urges at a much younger age, with overall teen pregnancies on the rise in the US for the first time in fifteen years. Additional study also indicated that this earlier maturity was contributing to a higher risk of reproductive cancers, breast cancer, and colon cancer.
And what changed 20 years ago? This was about the time that milk producers started the practice of injecting their dairy cows with Bovine Growth Hormone to stimulate milk production.
When my daughter entered third grade several years ago, we were stunned to discover that half her friends were wearing brassieres. One of them had even started her period over the summer. Even though the FDA indicated that there was nothing wrong with Bovine Growth Hormone treated milk, we decided it was time for a radical diet change that was free of hormones and steroids.
Shopping hormone free
This controversial hormone, called Bovine Growth Hormone (sometimes referred to as rBGH or rBST) is only found in milk and beef originating from dairy cows. This includes all types of milks, yogurts, cheeses, and certain types of beef products. At the time of our diet change, only two stores locally were carrying hormone free milk and beef cuts, our local health food store and Kroegers. Since then, many more stores have committed to carrying only hormone free milk. A complete list can be found here.
Our diets were changed to include more pork and chicken which are hormone free, and certified rBGH free dairy and beef products.
The unofficial case study
My case study was neither scientific nor carefully graphed. However, my daughter was one in a group of girls who had known each since first grade. And of these girls, our family and two others were the only ones who had switched to a rBGH free diet several years ago.
Did it make much of a difference?
In the past year, my daughter began to notice physical differences between herself and her friends. The majority of the girls were having regular periods by the end of 5th grade (some started as early as 3rd and 4th), were wearing adult sized bras, and exhibiting those wild mood swings so typical of adolescents. The three girls who were eating organic foods were not. Without jumping to conclusions, I can’t get around the fact that the three girls on organic diets are maturing at a level similar to when I was a kid, whereas the others are developing at a much more accelerated rate.
If it were just a matter of a bigger bra size, I don’t think I’d be concerned. What does concern me is the problems rBGH seems to be causing in cattle, besides a painfully enlarged udder. As an old farm girl who was raised on a mid sized dairy farm, I learned a very important lesson the year my Pa fed onion sileage to his dairy herd ~ what goes into a cow always comes out in the milk.
Dairy cattle who receive regular injections of rBGH have an 80% greater risk of developing mastitis. They also experience increased infertility, increased cystic ovaries, increased risk of diabetes and a significantly reduced life span. Scientists seem to have mixed reactions about this, with some claiming that it’s the increased milk production causing these problems and not the rBGH. OK, so maybe I can buy that. My farm sense however tells me that somewhere on down the road, milk drinkers will be seeing side effects if they continue their consumption of rBGH treated dairy products, side effects far worse than the flatulence caused by onion milk.
I for one, am not willing to take that chance.
