In recent years, if you search the Internet casually, you can see various reports of precocious puberty in infants. The media often question that precocious puberty is caused by food.
Fast-growing chickens, off-season vegetables, bean products, bovine colostrum, milk powder… Well, there are quite a lot of food shot.
Will those legendary foods lead to precocious puberty? Is precocious puberty caused by what? How should we prevent it?
These five kinds of foods will not lead to precocious puberty.
First of all, let’s analyze the five foods that are most frequently shot.
Step 1: Fast-growing chicken
The most typical statement about precocious puberty caused by animal food is fast-growing chickens treated with hormones.
The fast-growing chicken we are talking about belongs to [fast-growing white-feather chicken] and is the result of improved variety breeding and scientific feeding.
In order to meet people’s demand for high protein meat products, scientists began to do one thing-to select fast and large chickens and reproduce them.
Through continuous scientific research, the white chicken we eat today has gradually been cultivated.
For example, if we are surrounded by big men like Yao Ming and Ye Li, then their children will definitely be much taller than the average person.
This point is explicitly mentioned in the National Broiler Genetic Improvement Plan (2014-2025) > of the National Ministry of Agriculture. It is a national strategic plan to select excellent chickens and cultivate fast and good chickens. Obviously, it is very safe, mature and necessary to cultivate such fast and good chickens.
If you think about it carefully, you will know that white-feather chickens can be put on the market in more than 40 days, basically relying on heredity.
Therefore, the so-called [fast-growing chicken] is actually a white-feather chicken. People’s parents get faster, but the congenital conditions are better.
We should not be disturbed by the kind rumor mongers and destroy the good mood of eating chicken.
2. Ripening Plants
Off-season vegetables and fruits, cucumbers with prickly top flowers, ripening bananas, mangoes, watermelons with swelling agents…
The media often say that these vegetables and fruits are ripened with [hormones], which is actually very imprecise.
Strictly speaking, these so-called [plant hormones] are actually called plant growth regulators, which are different from human hormones.
Relevant data from the Ministry of Agriculture show that ripening agents or swelling agents belong to plant growth regulators and are widely used in agricultural production all over the world.
As the name implies, plant growth regulators regulate the growth and development of plants. As long as they are used according to standards, they will not cause harm to human health.
To take a step back, even if the plant growth regulator is not used in a standardized way, the adverse effect is that the plant grows too fast and affects its taste and quality, but it is still safe for people.
3. Bean products such as tofu and soybean milk
Some media said that bean products contain a kind of estrogen [soybean isoflavone], which may lead to precocious puberty in infants.
But please pay attention to the word “estrogen-like”!
Estrogen-like hormone is not equivalent to estrogen in human body, and its content in bean products is also very limited.
In fact, to some extent, soybean isoflavone is a [good friend] of the human body, which can help regulate the estrogen level of the human body.
When the human estrogen level is insufficient, it can slightly make up for the deficiency of estrogen. When the estrogen level is high, it can reduce the estrogen level in the body to a certain extent by binding with estrogen receptor.
In addition, bean products are rich in nutrition, so eating bean products every day is very good for human body.
< < Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents > > It is recommended to eat 30 ~ 50g of soybean every day, which is absolutely safe and reasonable intake.
Under normal circumstances, if 50 grams of dried beans are converted into soybean products, it is about 200 grams of tofu, which is about half a box of boxed tofu. Or 800 milliliters, or about 4 cups of soya-bean milk.
In short, normal eating of bean products will not lead to high estrogen levels in the body, men will not become mothers, and women do not need to worry about breast cancer and other diseases.
4. Bovine colostrum
The Ministry of Health stipulates that from September 1, 2012, bovine colostrum and dairy products made from bovine colostrum will not be added to infant formula foods.
This regulation has been interpreted by some media as [because bovine colostrum may lead to precocious puberty].
In fact, the relevant industries have determined the content of 50 hormones in bovine colostrum, and the results show that there is no statistical difference between the hormones in bovine colostrum and ordinary milk.
Therefore, in this pot of precocious puberty, bovine colostrum does not carry back.
However, we still do not recommend babies to eat bovine colostrum.
The reason is not what’s precocious puberty, but:
- Bovine colostrum is not so good: there is no effective evidence to show that bovine colostrum has the effect of improving immunity and making babies less sick. Bovine colostrum may be harmful: the nutritional structure of bovine colostrum is not suitable for babies, and the high proportion of protein will increase the burden on babies’ kidneys; Bovine colostrum also has the risk of causing baby allergy.
5. Infant milk powder
Milk is secreted by cows. There is no doubt that there will be cow hormones in it. Will milk powder lead to precocious puberty?
In 2010, the media revealed [XX milk powder precocious puberty case], and the Ministry of Health tested the samples of the products involved. Comparing this milk powder with milk and breast milk, the result is as follows:
- Incident products: estrogen 0.2 ~ 2.3, progesterone 13 ~ 72 milk: estrogen 0.16 ~ 4.4, progesterone content up to 98 breast milk: estrogen 7.9 ~ 18.5, progesterone 10 ~ 40
In other words, XX brand milk powder contains far less estrogen than breast milk, and progesterone is no different from ordinary milk, many of which are equivalent to the level of progesterone in breast milk.
Finally, the expert group, including doctors, decided that the cases reported at the beginning were all individual cases and were not caused by milk powder.
If you think about it a little, you will know that if a certain kind of best-selling food really leads to precocious puberty, there will not be only individual cases. Maybe all the children around us are precocious puberty.
Is what the cause of precocious puberty?
Precocious puberty is divided into true precocious puberty and pseudo precocious puberty.
True precocious puberty may be caused by intracranial infection, trauma or tumor, or it may be the so-called [idiopathic central precocious puberty] for which no cause can be found.
There are also many causes of pseudoprecocious puberty, such as tumors in ovaries and testis, which stimulate the body to secrete sex hormones and lead to premature development.
Therefore, if the child has precocious puberty, he should go to the hospital as soon as possible to eliminate organic diseases.
How to avoid precocious puberty?
Although many media will simply conclude in their reports that children suffer from precocious puberty due to eating such and such foods, this is actually a wrong understanding of correlation and causality.
Children with precocious puberty still have the habit of drinking water for a long time and eating for a long time. It is absurd to say that this is the cause of children’s precocious puberty.
Parents want to avoid their children’s precocious puberty, not eating chicken, not eating off-season vegetables, and being completely vegetarian… All of them are unreliable. There are several more reliable suggestions:
- Reasonable combination of grains, vegetables, meat, eggs and milk, Avoid excessive nutrition. Drink plain boiled water as much as possible when thirsty, drink less fruit juice and beverages, and avoid excessive energy intake. Try not to give children nutritional health care products, and products without [blue hat] logo must not be eaten. Encourage children to play and exercise outdoors more. If parents are taking contraceptives, they must put them away to avoid children turning them out and taking them by mistake.
If the child shows signs of precocious puberty, he should first go to a regular hospital to eliminate the possibility of disease.