I was in Norman, Oklahoma, last week giving my “antibiotics used in food animals” presentation to a group of physicians, sponsored by the Oklahoma Beef Council.

First question out of the mouth of one of the Docs during Q and A was, “So I am now OK with the use of most antibiotics used in animals and can better answer my patients’ questions about that practice. But what about hormones used in animals and their effect on earlier ages of puberty?”

I asked him if he ate ground beef. He answered yes. I suggested to him that the hormone levels in the meat from a spent dairy cow were certainly much higher than that in a steer with an implant.

I asked him if he preferred the chicken with the label “Raised Without Hormones or Steroids” over conventional and he replied “yes”. I then explained it is against the law to use hormones in poultry or pork.

I doubt few in the room knew that, and these are educated men and women. But labels like the one above only tend to spread misinformation and to confuse consumers.

I also advised him that the age of puberty in young girls has been dropping very steadily for the last century due to improvements in health brought about by diet, antibiotics, vaccines etc.

And then I asked him why estrogen would be responsible for the same drop in age for the onset of puberty in young boys?

But I felt the need for more specific data if asked again as I will be making the same presentation to other physician groups soon.

Meat from cattle implanted with that estrogen hormone contains 1.9 nanograms of estrogen per 3 ounce serving. Non-implanted meat will contain 1.3 nanograms. So there is a difference, and no one should claim there is not. But the 1.9 nanograms of estrogen contained in one serving of beef (3ounces) are nothing compared to the 225 nanograms in a potato or the 11,250 nanograms of estrogen in soy milk.

How about the birth control pill that contains 35,000 nanograms or the 480,000 nanograms of estrogen produced daily by a woman before menopause?

And lastly, most estrogen consumed orally is broken down by our digestive system long before it enters our blood stream. The amount that could be measured from even a 16-ounce rib eye is going to be so negligible as to not even make the needle move.

I admit my bias, but when a physician has to ask that question because he does not know, I can’t even imagine what is going through today’s millennials’ minds as they search for “knowledge” on the internet, Face Book, Twitter and the blogosphere.

Hormones revisited

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