• Question: Do you we get hormones from our food? If so, are they bad for us to take in?

    Asked by lukethetieman to Derek, Elaine, Heather, Keith on 26 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Elaine Marshall

      Elaine Marshall answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      This is a very interesting question. There is a growing body of evidence that a group of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors (chemicals that mimic or disrupt our endogenous hormones) are present in our environment and we may adsorb small levels of them in the course of our life time. The source of this contamination is usually plastics. If food is in contact with the plastic, it may adsorb the chemical, however there are strict EU rules about what is allowed in food packaging to keep us safe. Also product shelf life prevents long term accumulation of a chemical.

      There is also strict rules regarding food production (how meat and veg are grow and prepared) so again they shouldn’t contain anything to harm us.

      Take home message is that our food should be safe to eat and not contain any chemical at harmful levels!

    • Photo: Heather Eyre

      Heather Eyre answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      There will have been hormones in what ever you choose to eat at some point (phytohormones in plants, hormones in animal), but as they are mad of protein/fats your body with digest most them and break them up so they are no longer active.

      There are quiet a lot of people who worry massively about these kinds of things, but most of the time science doesn’t back up the worries. Lots of people who write about this type of thing online don’t use research properly – they’ll say something like ‘ avoid compound A in your diet as it feminises males and causes weight gain’ – when really the research is in mice (or even fish) and big studies on humans have shown no effects!

      That doesn’t mean that artificial hormones don’t affect humans, but that we don’t really know the full story yet!

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