Hormones in Beef: The Rest of the Story

Alright, so I want to talk a little bit about hormones in beef cattle.  I mean we all know a lot about them, mass media tells about them almost daily, about how they are bad for us and how they increase the risk of cancer.  But what has always puzzled me is why we only hear about hormones in the beef industry, and about how hormone consumption in beef is going to kill us.  Well I want to tell you a little bit of the rest of the story.  Yes, it is true conventionally raised beef does contain hormones.  It contains 1.9 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  This is compared to all natural certified organic beef which contains 1.5 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  That is a difference of .4 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  That is decimal point with eight zeros and a four behind it (.000000004).  There is not much of a difference.  Now compare that to a food like soybeans.  Soybeans contain phytoestrogens which have been proven to be hormonally active in humans, per three ounce serving of soybean oil there are 168,000 nanograms of phytoestrogens.  Per three ounce serving of cabbage there are 2016 nanograms of estradiol.  Both of these foods contain no meat and are used frequently in vegetarian and vegan diets.

According to USDA numbers an average per capita 60 pounds of beef is consumed per person per year in the United States.  That works out to be 320-three ounce servings per year per person.  Which in turn comes to approximately 1077.17 nanograms of estradiol per year from beef consumption.

Now I want to compare that number to something that is practiced by thousands of women every day in the United States: birth control.  What I have here is a progesterone based birth control product.  It contains .035 mg of estradiol per pill and is based on a 28 day cycle so there are 21 active pills in a dispenser of this product.  If you consider a woman who uses this product for one year, that is 252 pills or 8,820 nanograms of estradiol per year.  Remember the amount estradiol per year from beef was 1077 nanograms per year. Approximately eight times more estrogen from progesterone based birth control than from beef. Now let’s consider a woman who takes an estrogen based birth control pill. They contain 35,000 nanograms of estradiol per pill which for the same 252 pill year works out to be 8,820,000 nanograms of estradiol per year.  That is approximately equal to 875,868 lbs of beef.  Or on a hot carcass weight basis, that is like eating 1100 steers per year per person.  That works out to be just a little over three steers per person per day.  So in summary for every one pill of estrogen based birth control consumed it is like eating 3 whole cows by yourself, daily. 

If you want to trim hormones out of your diets, beef should probably not be the first place you look. 

Thanks for reading and please let us know if you have questions and leave your comments below!

~ Nick Henning