Childhood Growth and Early Maturity
Recent studies are lending powerful support confirming the position that most adult cancers are strongly associated with overeating, eating less fruits and vegetables, and eating more dairy, meats, and processed food during childhood. Many parents enthusiastically strive to overfeed their children with the purpose of achieving excessive growth. While childhood growth and early maturity have been hailed by some as a success of this century, the scientific data questions these common objectives.
Numerous scientific investigations report the relationship between high calorie intake in childhood and cancer. Once recent study followed 3,834 subjects over fifty years, measuring dietary intake in childhood. They collected data on children’s diets between 1937 and 1939. This study found a positive association between calories consumed during early life and later mortality from every cancer other than those related to smoking. Each increased energy intake of 1 MJ/day (238 calories) was associated with a 20% increased risk of mortality from the most common cancers. Fewer calories consumed during childhood provided protection against all three common cancers (breast, prostate, colon). The researchers concluded that:
This positive association between childhood energy (caloric) intake and later cancer is consistent with animal evidence linking energy restriction with reduced incidence of cancer and the association between height and human cancer, implying that higher levels of energy intake in childhood increase the risk of later development of cancer. This evidence for long term effect of early diet confirms the importance of optimal nutrition in childhood and suggests that the unfavorable trends seen in the incidence of some cancers may have their origins in early life.
Today our children’s caloric consumption is at an all-time high. With all the high-calorie, low-nutrient processed foods, soft drinks, fast foods, pizza, cheese, and butter kids eat today, the girth of America’s children is increasing at an alarming rate. This foretells an increase in the cancer epidemic in the future. Little do parents know — their children are eating themselves to death.
Scientific studies have consistently repeated the observation that most common cancers are associated with stimulated growth in childhood, especially growth fueled by a diet heavy in growth-promoting animal products. This protein- and fat- rich diet is enabling today’s children to exceed the height predicted by their parental genetics. But children who mature early and grow taller than expected by parental height have been shown to be at higher risk of breast, prostate, colorectal, leukemic, ovarian, and endometrial cancers.
Animal models have displayed this phenomenon for decades. We now have the data to conclude that the same is true for humans. Growth can be equated with aging; slower growth leads to slower aging and longer life. We used to think rapid growth in our children was a beneficial phenomenon. “Drink your milk. It will help you grow big and strong,” parents parroted to their children. Over the years, however, scientists have noted that animals that grow faster and mature quicker, die younger. Now we find that drinking “growth-promoting” cow’s milk in early childhood may have negative effects. Humans are designed to be raised on human milk in the first few years of life, not cow’s milk. Human milk makes for slower growth. Cow’s milk is especially designed for baby cows, and it supplies the nutrients to facilitate the rapid growth natural to cows.
Cheese consumption during childhood is a major concern because it takes ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese. Besides the bovine growth hormone given to cows, their milk contains estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, prolactin, and other natural cow hormones. Cheese not only is richer in saturated fat, but is a more concentrated source of these hormones. These milk hormones can exert effects on humans. The more you drink or eat dairy, the more hormones you get, and cheese consumption magnifies the negative aspects of cow’s milk. Whether it is the hormonal exposure, the high levels of saturated fat, or the growth-promoting effects, any way you look at it, the vastly successful advertising campaign waged on Americans has given milk and cheese an unearned health food status. Science suggests otherwise, and slower growth and a later maturation are favorable to longer life.
More and more studies are emerging that illustrate that rapid growth at an early age shows an even stronger association to cancer than simply being overweight… Dietary excesses in early childhood and the consumption of growth-promoting foods such as cow’s milk, cheese, and meat is marked by acceleration in growth and an earlier attainment of adult height and size. We should want our children to grow slowly. The faster they grown and the faster they reach puberty, the faster they age and the greater the risk of getting a later-life cancer.
– Disease-Proof Your Child (2005) by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.; pages 83 – 89
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The information contained throughout this blog / website should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician / physician.
