Across America, Girls Are Beginning Puberty Younger

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Girls around the country are starting puberty ever younger, says a new study out in Pediatrics. Researchers led by Frank Biro studied more than a thousand girls between six and eight years old from New York, Cincinnati, and San Francisco. Their findings: By the age of 7, about 23 percent of black girls, 15 percent of Hispanic girls, and 11 percent of white girls showed enough breast development to be considered pubescent. Those numbers are even more extreme than the findings of a similar 1997 study that seemed to show the age entering puberty was dropping fast.

Says Biro:

"In 1997, people said, 'That can't be right; there must be something wrong with the study'. But the average age is going down even further" [Los Angeles Times].

The starkness of Biro's statistics has drawn plenty of attention. But just what it means is a difficult question, because there's no "ideal" age for entering puberty.

A girl needs a certain amount of body fat to start menstruating, and girls who are malnourished or ill may have delayed puberty. In developed countries, the age of puberty dropped from the 19th to 20th centuries, as nutrition improved and infectious diseases were brought under better control, and it was seen as a sign of progress [The New York Times].

However, seven and eight years old might be "too young," given the possible psychological and medical effects. Going through puberty early might affect cancer risk by increasing one's lifetime exposure to hormones like estrogen and progesterone, which can speed tumor growth in some cases. There are probably other consequences yet unknown.

And then, Biro says, there's the concern of one's physical and emotional maturity moving at different rates:

"For the 11-year-old that looks like she's 15 or 16, adults are going to interact with her like she's 15 or 16, but so are her peers."… Girls who develop young "look physically older," he said, adding, "It doesn't mean that they're psychologically or socially more mature" [New York Daily News].

The big question is why this is happening—studies in China and Denmark recently have picked up the same phenomenon. Biro's study can't address that part, but he has some ideas.

He speculates that its primary driver may be overweight and obesity, because estrogen is sequestered in fat tissue. But environmental exposures to chemicals — including pesticides and endocrine-disrupting chemicals like bisphenol A, commonly found in plastics, and phthalates, which are contained in many personal-care products — could also play a role [TIME].

http://blogs.discove...uberty-younger/

[slim 1,528]

My sistas have been telling me for years that pink hair relaxer makes their boobies and booties grow phatter phaster.

They've also said being fatter helps jump start it. "I used to be soooo fat. But look at me now... I'm thicky-thick!"

[Heracles 417]

Probably has to do will all the chemicals and ####### in the food here. Even the containers are not BPA free.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Probably has to do will all the chemicals and ####### in the food here. Even the containers are not BPA free.

What's your excuse?

[Heracles 417]

What's your excuse?

I was about to say, I spoke to your mom and she said you started growing boobs early too.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

I was about to say, I spoke to your mom and she said you started growing boobs early too.

Is it the pure Australian food and water that cultivated you into such a prize package? Just curious.

[slim 1,528]

The chemicals here in Cincinnati may've made the girls get boobies earlier, but it also made my wang hugified!

[Moonandstar 6]

The chemicals here in Cincinnati may've made the girls get boobies earlier, but it also made my wang hugified!

So that's why I'm always buying big underwear....

[Nagishkaw 510]

Probably has to do will all the chemicals and ####### in the food here. Even the containers are not BPA free.

Especially meat and dairy products.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Especially meat and dairy products.

Yes! Time for new legislation! Make dirty evil Americans be Vegans only!!!!

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Yes! Time for new legislation! Make dirty evil Americans be Vegans only!!!!

But that wouldn't be fair to vegetables.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

But that wouldn't be fair to vegetables.

perhapps cannibalism? though we can only eat our own flesh?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

perhapps cannibalism? though we can only eat our own flesh?

Cannibalism would be a good form of population control.

[slim 1,528]

Yes! Time for new legislation! Make dirty evil Americans be Vegans only!!!!

They're already doing it. Reference here - http://www.grist.org/article/food-five-tips-for-surviving-a-raid-on-your-farm-or-food-club/

When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn't know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat's milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)

But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn't the least bit tongue-tied. "She started back-talking to them," recalls Palmer. "She said, 'If you take my computer again, I can't do my homework.' This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven't gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids."

As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents -- from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture -- took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.

While no one will say officially what the purpose of this latest raid was, aside from being part of an investigation in progress, what is very clear is that government raids of producers, distributors, and even consumers of nutritionally dense foods appear to be happening ever more frequently. Sometimes they are meant to counter raw dairy production, other times to challenge private food organizations over whether they should be licensed as food retailers.

The same day Sharon Palmer's farm was raided, there was a raid on Rawesome Foods, a Venice, Calif., private food club run by nutritionist and raw-food advocate Aajonus Vonderplanitz. For a membership fee of $25, consumers can purchase unpasteurized dairy products, eggs that are not only organic but unwashed, and a wide assortment of fermented vegetables and other products.

The main difference in the two raids seems to be that Palmer's raiding party was actually much smaller, about half the size of the Venice contingent: Vonderplanitz was also visited by the FBI and the FDA.

In the Rawesome raid, agents made off with several thousand dollars worth of raw honey and raw dairy products. They also shut Rawesome for failure to have a public health permit, though the size and scope of the raid suggests the government officials might have more in mind. Regardless, within hours the outlet reopened in defiance of the shutdown order.

Earlier in June, agents of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, escorted by police and also bearing search warrants, raided and shut down Traditional Foods Warehouse, a popular food club in Minneapolis specializing in locally-produced foods. They also raided two farms suspected of illegally selling raw milk. And in a national first among such raids, agents searched a private home and made off with computers; the family's offense appears to have been that it allowed one of the raw dairy farmers to park in its driveway to distribute raw milk to area residents who had ordered it.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has declined comment on such raids, saying they are part of an ongoing investigation into raw milk distribution in the state in lieu of eight illnesses in May linked to raw milk.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection has launched three raids over the last three months on the dairy farm and farm store of Vernon Hershberger, near Madison. The day after DATCP agents placed seals on his fridges storing raw dairy products in July, Hershberger cut the seals, and announced he was going to challenge the agency's contention he needs a dairy and retail license to sell his products. Obtaining such licenses would be problematic, though, since Wisconsin prohibits sale of raw milk, except "incidental" sales, and defining "incidental" has been a bone of contention for many years. In any event, Hershberger contends he sells only to consumers who contract privately for his food.

What's behind all these raids? They seem to stem from increasing concern at both the state and federal level about the spread of private food groups that have sprung up around the country in recent years -- food clubs and buying groups to provide specialized local products that are generally unavailable in groceries, like grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, fermented foods, and, in some cases, raw dairy products. Because they are private and limited to consumers who sign up for membership, these groups generally avoid obtaining retail and public health licenses required of retailers that sell to the general public. (For more on what's behind the raids, see this new post.)

In late 2008 and early 2009, the representatives of state agriculture agencies in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois met via phone conferences with representatives of the FDA to map a plan for targeting raw-milk buying clubs in the Midwest. The meetings came to light after Max Kane, the owner of a Wisconsin buying club who was subpoenaed by Wisconsin authorities for the names of his customers and suppliers, obtained email accounts of the sessions via a Freedom of Information request to Wisconsin's Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection department. (Kane has since been prosecuted by Wisconsin authorities for contempt of court for failing to give up the names; his case is under appeal after he was found guilty last December.)

Now, the Midwest program seems to have gone national, and the recent spate of raids suggests a quickening pace and broadened scope. While most raids before the Midwest government meetings had been related to raw-milk distribution, some, like a December 2008 armed raid of Manna Storehouse, an Ohio food club near Cleveland, have been about licensing issues. In that raid, armed law enforcement officers held a mother and eight young children being home-schooled at gunpoint for several hours while they searched the home and food storage areas. A legal challenge to the raid by the family is still tied up in court.

The current uptick has Pete Kennedy of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund concerned, not only about the spreading of the raids, but about the seemingly easy willingness of judges to hand out search warrants. While the U.S. Constitution's fourth amendment suggests judges should exercise tight controls over search warrants ("no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause..."), Kennedy observes, "I haven't seen an agency turned down yet" over the last four years in requests for search warrants connected with raw milk and other food production and distribution.

Given that the targets of search warrants don't get a say in court as to whether they should be issued, legal experts and those who have been raided say the most that food producers can do is take steps to prepare themselves to weather the raids as best they can.

[elmcitymaven 9,712]

You have some very strange ideas about feminism and the importance of traditional gender roles.

Well, you know us Anglophone women. We're all crypto-male, shrewish, obese, gold-digging, tracksuit-wearing, gum-popping, brat-breeding, hairy-legged, ball-busting harpies that should be kicked into the gutter and run over by a double decker bus.