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High-calorie foods accelerate puberty in modern girls
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Scientists believe that the decline in the age at which girls have their first menstruation is not least due to the modern high-calorie diet. Unfortunately, an abundance of calories does not contribute to the same acceleration in the development of the nervous system.
According to statistics, over the last 150 years, the age of puberty in women has dropped by 4 years: the first menstruation now occurs not at 12, but at 8 years. At first glance, it is impossible to understand why puberty has accelerated so much: the process depends on hundreds of factors, from purely genetic to territorial-geographical and environmental. And yet, researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA) were lucky in a sense: they were able to determine at least one specific reason for accelerated puberty, and this reason is food.
Scientists have noticed that similar changes have occurred in rhesus macaques from the National Primate Research Center in Wisconsin over the past 30 years. Female monkeys have been gaining weight faster and faster and have become ready to reproduce. The physiology of rhesus macaques is similar to ours in many ways, and scientists have decided to study the phenomenon of accelerated maturation in them. Moreover, environmental factors in animal experiments are subject to greater control, and it is much easier to determine the cause of certain changes here than in statistical studies of humans. In the case of monkeys, scientists have been observing the animals' behavior, including their eating habits, for many years, and the macaques' diet has become more nutritious every year.
To test the hypothesis that calories are the reason for the precocity of females, zoologists conducted a simple experiment: they selected several young macaques and put them on different diets - some on a normal diet, others on an enriched one. When the monkeys entered puberty, those who ate better than the norm took 6-7 months, while those on a normal diet took 12-14 months. The abundance of calories stimulated the synthesis of the hormones leptin and somatomedin, which participate in the growth of muscles, bones, and adipose tissue.
In general, large calories are the cause of acceleration; this has now been proven experimentally, and the results of the work have been published in the journal Endocrinology.
In this case, as scientists assure, these data can be applied to humans without any problems. Perhaps, at first glance, there is no problem at all. But, firstly, scientists have some reason to believe that early maturation is subsequently followed by a wide range of metabolic diseases, including diabetes. And secondly, accelerated puberty is not accompanied by the same acceleration in the development of the nervous system. Which, in turn, can be the cause of inadequate behavior and psychological disorders in victims of acceleration. And it is still unknown what is more dangerous for a child's fragile psyche - a horror movie on TV or McDonald's.
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