Food

Staggeringly Young Puberty

Little girls are entering puberty at staggeringly young ages. And guess what's causing it...

The study revealed a surprisingly large bump in the number of girls going through puberty between the ages of 7 and 8. For example, the researches found that 10 percent of 7-year-old white girls had some breast development as compared to 5 percent in a study published in 1997. Similarly, 23 percent of the 7-year-old black girls had started puberty as compared to 15 percent in the 1997 study.

Nobody’s sure what is driving the declining age of puberty. But the rise in obesity could be at least partly to blame, says the study’s lead author, Dr. Frank Biro, director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. [...]

For example, Korenman says, environmental exposure to estrogens in plastics, chemicals and foods has been going up. “And estrogens do stimulate breast development,” he adds.

The obvious next question is: what the crap is all of this estrogen doing to boys?

But I'm sure we'll see commercials from Dick Berman suggesting that estrogen "in moderation" is just fine and dandy.