Milk and maturity

Earlier this week I had dinner with Ryan’s aunts and cousins in the area. As life continues to whirl by faster, I think it’s great that this group of extraordinary women takes time to reconnect regularly. And the food is always amazing.

Our conversations run the gamut. Monday night’s discussion turned to the controversy surrounding milk and young girls. One woman was told she should give her three year old organic milk. Apparently some believe the hormones given to cows to produce more milk cause girls to go through puberty early.

I’d heard about this before and…well, I just don’t buy it. My uncle is a dairy farmer. If he uses hormones I would bet he doesn’t do it any differently now than he did 15-20 years ago. And I’m sure he learned his ways from my grandpa who started milking almost fifty years ago. For the brief time my parents farmed and milked we took milk straight out of the bulk tank. And that milk, my friends, wasn’t even pasteurized.

So I did a quick Google search. A Cornell University study goes into a lot of scientific detail but the biggest things I took from that article are that the cows naturally produce hormones and it is impossible to tell the difference between naturally occurring hormones and artificial ones in milk. Secondly, the hormones are also found in meat as well. Are parents going to stop their little girls from eating a cheeseburger too? More importantly it’s been found that the hormones found in cattle do not affect us – our body simply doesn’t recognize them. This study concluded that more research needs to be done before people should shell out $6 for a gallon of organic milk.
I also found a Denver Post editorial. This one was particularly interesting. It is written by a woman who – despite having a daughter who developed breasts at 8 years old – doesn’t believe it came from milk. She did her own research and found many studies correlate obesity to early puberty in young girls.

My honest opinion… ‘organic’ is just the new trendy thing to do. Or it’s a marketing scheme to bolster sales of organic milk. The Organic Consumer’s Association is now warning against giving soy milk to girls because of the hormones. Apparently organic is the only way to go…