Overweight Populace and Growth Hormones in Food

I don't know anything about the subject, so I couldn't comment on whether its plausible growth hormones are making us get gain weight.

Personally, I blame marketing. Companies promote larger portions in order to justify higher prices. You see its more profitable to sell one $10 steak to one person than it is to sell two $5 dollar steaks to two people, even if we're talking the same amount of meat. So in an effort to increase profits, our portion sizes are increasing every year. Not only are we much less active than the previous generations, we eat more. Factor in the fatty and sweet foods we eat and it's probably a miricle we're not heavier.

I also am not an expert in this area, but I have something to say on the topic. My wife is from Thailand, and I have visited there, once for four months. The villagers are almost exclusively well fed and very thin by American standards. That said, they also live a more active lifestyle, as a general rule, but by my careful observation, my opinion is that this does not correlate well to explain the difference. (Although when they work, they typically work very hard, they live a MUCH less stressful life, and have more true relaxation time between hours of working.) So at first, a look at their diet and mine while I was there. (I lost 35lbs and became very healthy in the rocess, eating all I could of their village diet.) The calorie count was high, meats and fish and poultry were abundant (except for beef), and rice was their staple, with vegetables in a bit larger proportion than typical Americans. I did find many Thai people who looked overweight or even obese, living in Bangkok, their Capital and a major city. In Bangkok, lifestyle is much like An American living in Los Angeles. Those obese, including children, were much more likely to be overweight if they ate lots of junk food, and avoided the traditional Thai fare (it is time-consuming, and the fast LA-style of living leaves them with little time to cook the old way). In summary, I found types of traditional food and nutrition failed to explain the difference, and only two possibilities could explain the difference: 1) Lifestyle and/or 2)American style processed and especially junk food. I found that they have been learning American style food processing and marketing ways. I don't know if they are using growth hormones in abundance, but I wouldn't put it past them, the chemical manufacturers have been marketing their wares overseas profusely, even the ones that are outlawed in America as unsafe! If the hormones are related, it may be that the chemically treated animals don't make it to the villages. That's all I have to say on that.

The primary reason is the fat content of the food that makes the difference. There are other factors, but fat and sweets make the biggest contribution.

US foods have a higher content of fat because we have booth a fat and a sweet tooth and companies pander to what people want.

If those people came to live here and ate the food you ate and still were active they, too, would start gaining weight. That very fact has been documented time and time again.

Your best recourse is to eat smart and read the labels. Exercise regularly.

This is one of my favourite subjects!!!! I think you may have a valid concern up to a point(my opinion only). I carried out a basic study some years ago as to a possible link between the incidences of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and the increase in attacks by breeds of dogs bred for their guarding abilities. The point of interest was the potential link between pet food products containing derivatives from cattle subject to infection by BSE and the potential for the inherent aggressive instincts of the dogs in question to be overly stimulated. Although no conclusive results were obtained, it did raise the question as to whether seemingly innoccuous changes to animal diet could result in behavioural changes. Why should that not apply to humans also? The food production industries are geared towards increasing consumer usage to the nth degree as a result of pressures placed upon the majority of them by ever-increasing supermarket demands. Cheaper products, faster turnover, longer shelf lives, consistancy of appearance, etc. This is a snake eating its own tail......consumers are becoming used to cheaper products and the availability of 'unseasonal' produce year round. This leads to higher demands on the supermarket chains to accede to customer requirements (and outperform the competition at the same time)and hence increased demands on food producers to supply ever cheaper products. In addition, you need to consider the effects of demographic requirements on supermarket/chain store/convenience store stocking policies. In affluent areas retailers can afford to supply higher quality produce (i.e: organic, free range, etc) that are possibly less profitable in less affluent areas (such as large housing estates)which make up the vast majority of retail opportunity. To further complicate the situation, the demands of modern life (and to an extent the disappearance of traditional skills such as basic cookery in some cases) lead to a huge demand for so-called 'convenience' foods......ready-meals, highly-processed snack foods, etc. So in a nutshell, we have the availability (and aggressive marketing) of cheap, processed, easily-prepared foodstuffs directly marketed to a consumer base that has become accustomed to low-cost and convenient foodstuffs. If you then take into account this change in values and ally that to the trend towards a more sedentary existance (playstations have a lot to answer for) we end up with a large proportion of the population existing on a diet that may contain a high proportion of salt, additives, preservatives and modified ingredients. Who can say with certainty that this is not having an effect? I'd like to hear other's opinions on this.......Hotdog anyone?

I really don't have much sympathy for the "it's not my fault, the evil supermarkets / multinational food companies / advertisers made me eat it" line of thought. We know that ciggies are bad for us, we know that fresh food is good for us and we know exercise is good for us. But we don't pay any attention. If we are too lazy to change our lifestyles then why should we moan when we get get cancer / fat / buy stuff we don't want. It's not difficult to change your lifestyle you just have to want to do it. Non-celebrity fit club anyone? Aimed at the couch potatoes eating Doritos and drinking beer watching the Celebrity version?

Excellent point. I think one of the main areas for concern is the complacent attitudes of both retailers (who are focused on maximising profits) and the large proportion of the public who remain sedentary. An emerging trend seems to be heading towards raising awareness of the benefits of a healthier lifestyle (as can be seen by the glossy, glamorous tv campaign for Sainsbury's, for example) But my view is that this is aimed once again at that relatively small demographic that are moderately affluent (and that may just be a cynical marketing ploy to increase market share). I can't speak for attitudes in the US (I'm UK based), but we are seeing a vast increase in tv programming aimed at lifestyle changes. To me, this would indicate that there is a significant problem relating to the overall decline of nutritional health and exercise levels. I wonder if changes to school curriculums have a bearing on this? The 'get 'em when they're young' philosophy?

reading these replys, i havent heard of anyone that disagrees with the thought of the food we eat, having growth drugs, and who knows what else, in there system, when we eat it,,!! and is this passed on to us? if so then it would make the problem of gaining weight, by chemicals. some of us do get exercise and try to eat correct foods, and yet still gain weight, are we fighting against drugs, or body, its easy to say its our eating and life styles that are causing it, but is it really, would we be much better at correcting our weight if we didnt have to deal with drugs telling our body's to gain/ store, bulk up, just like the products were eating????!!! I wonder?? and if so can the producers stop, bet not, its a race to get the produce to the store, theres bucks to be made, and lots of it!!

Ask Dr. Wheil (sp?).

Possible connection. I am very active. I ride (hammer) a bicycle at the least 5 times per week, even in the snow and sub freezing temperatures where I live. My Mother moved in with us late last year, and we have had to adjust our diets to match her old Pennsylvania Dutch ways. She won't eat many vegetables, and certainly no Chinese or Japanese foods. A whole lot of beef and pork is what she wants, which we had almost eliminated from our diets prior to her arrival. I have packed on twelve pounds since then despite the intense bike riding. I have tried increasing the intensity and duration of my rides, but am still gaining weight.

When I was a kid in high school I was one of the tallest at 6'. Has anyone walked the halls of a high school today? The kids are enormous! A six-footer is no longer tall, but just average. Even a significant % of the girls seem to be in this size range now. To me, the evidence speaks for itself - our genetics haven't changed in a generation, so that leaves our diet as the culprit. (I seriously doubt that it is better health care. We had great health care when I was a kid.) I can't shake the idea that growth hormones or something else 'artificial' is behind all this. I'd be surprised if there hasn't already been a study along these lines but I'm not aware of one. Why should we care? Because messing with the normal, natural way of things usually has side effects we neither understand up front, notice in time, nor care for in the long run.

Firstly, rbGH (recombinant bovine Growth Hormone) is "safe to eat" because it is a peptide and thus destroyed in the stomach. Even cows must be INJECTED with it for it to have an effect on them. Peptides can be thought of as "miniature" proteins -peptides are maybe a dozen amino acids strung together, proteins hundreds and sometimes tens of thousands of amino acids. When you eat a cow, all "amino acid chains", the big proteins and the smaller peptides, get torn to pieces (into individual amino acids). This is the nature of digestion! Since you EAT cow products rather than inject them, cows can be quite "hopped up" with any manner of peptides, natural or not, without even a trace of an intact peptide making it into YOUR system. Like rbGH, insulin is also a peptide, which is why diabetics must inject it rather than eat it.

Secondly, rbGH is primarily used, not to make cows BIG, but to super-charge their milk production! It will make them grow faster too, but "Big Ag" uses mostly antibiotics (e.g. pennicillin) for that. That's a different topic -and very irresponsible too, as filling farm animals with antibiotics creates resistant "superbugs" that kill PEOPLE in hospitals. (Now, back to growth hormones...)

In the third place, BOVINE growth hormone is quite different from HUMAN growth hormone. Even if you injected it, it probably would have little effect (perhaps none ...but I wouldn't experiment!) Peptides are short strings of amino acids, much like a letters strung together to make up a password. Get one letter wrong, and "login rejected". Your HUMAN physiology requires a very different "password", so to speak, than does a cow. RbGH is the right "key" for the bovine lock, but it doesn't fit the human equivalent.

All of the above means that growth hormones do not account for the obesity of Americans and other gluttonous peoples. It is sheer calorie-consumption, combined with sloth, that makes us such pigs. In particular, we eat massive amounts of sugar and high-glycemic carbohydrates, in a single sitting, while we wath OTHER PEOPLE exercise on TV -Poof! Big fanny, big gut, triple chin, and coronary bypass!

Growth hormone for cows is not bad for YOU, but it is bad for cows!!! Super-charged dairy cows lead a miserable, short existence. Their udders are inflamed and painful, their teats are over-worked, and their daily grind is about as comfortable as having to pee real bad all the time. Some animal-rights activists claim that the milk itself is not safe -that there are higher levels of bacteria in the resulting milk, due to rampant UDDER infections, but I'm not sure if the statistics back that up. On the other hand, it's certainly PLAUSIBLE. In their rhetoric, they talk of "dairy pus". I don't want to think about my milk that way!

Excellent response!

There are 6 hormones allowed by the FDA to be used in cattle, not including rBGH: estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and three synthetic ones I forget the names of. These are given to enhance and speed growth and reduce the amount of food required by the animals. DES, which was discovered to cause cancer, was banned for use in cattle in the mid or late 1970s. The FDA does not approve the use of hormones in poultry or pigs, but they do allow beef products to be fed to chickens and pigs which might account for the high levels of hormones found in these animals.

In Europe, all use of hormones in livestock has been banned since the late 80s because scientists there believe there is a connection between the use of hormones in cattle and endocrine, neurological, immunological, developmental problems as well as an increased risk of cancer and genetic defects.

Here is a link with several articles at the end that go into more detail: http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones/. I'd be interested to learn more about this if anyone has any links also.

On a personal note, I was diagnosed with PCO (polycystic ovaries) in my early 20s, but after a lot of research and some looking into my own personal history, it's clear that I had an endocrine problem as early as 7 or 8 even though it wasn't diagnosed as such. Around that age, I started gaining weight and getting other symptoms like severe dandruff and cystic acne. I look at my lifestyle as a kid and I probably ate too much junk, but nothing like many people do now. I wasn't allowed sodas or sugar cereals, for example. What I find curious is that my sister who was close in age developed none of these symptoms. We ate all the same foods and had the same level of physical activity as we played the same sports and played together most of the time. The only difference in our habits was that she had a dairy allergy and didn't drink milk or eat dairy products. I, on the other hand, drank 3-5 glasses of milk every day for most of my childhood. In looking for the root of this disorder, I've wondered if there's some connection to all the dairy I consumed as a kid. I haven't found any studies that make the link, but there's a lot of speculation about it.

PCOs hasn't been proven to have a genetic component though if one woman in the family has it, the others are likely too. It's mostly thought of as a metabolic/endocrine disorder that is affecting growing numbers of women and adolescent girls in the US, about 5-10% of women. It's the leading cause of infertility in women in the US. Interestingly, women of East Indian origin who eat a vegetarian diet that includes a lot of dairy have a higher incidence of PCOs than the average population.

Work of Growth Hormone also known as HGH..

• Conversion of body fat to muscle mass E
• Energy level
• Growth of all tissues
• Tissue repair
• Cell replacement
  
• Weight loss
  

and many more.....