Will eating shrimp cause children to mature early?

I believe every parent is afraid that their children will show signs of precocious puberty, but in modern society, because many foods contain certain hormones, precocious puberty in children is becoming more and more common. Shrimp meat is rich in meat protein, and it tastes very chewy and smooth, so shrimp meat has become a common food on the daily table. But parents are worried that if children often eat shrimp, will it lead to premature puberty?

1There is no problem of feeding hormones to freshwater fish and shrimp

There is a rumor in society that the feed for freshwater farmed fish and shrimp contains hormones, which leads to hormones in freshwater aquatic products. The larger the freshwater product, the more hormones it contains. This does not make sense. There is no need to feed hormones in freshwater aquaculture. On the contrary, feeding hormones will accelerate the death of such aquatic products.

2. EEDs contamination in aquatic products caught from polluted waters can cause precocious puberty

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EEDs) are widely distributed in the environment and pose a major challenge to children's health worldwide. Among the impacts of environmental endocrine disruptors on children's health, precocious puberty has attracted much attention.

Professor Cai Depei from the Children's Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University pointed out that most types of EEDs often have dual activities of estrogenic effects and anti-androgenic effects, so they can cause precocious puberty in girls and symptoms of gonadal dysgenesis in boys.

So, where do EEDs that cause precocious puberty mainly come from?

Cai Depei believes that aquatic organisms are an important way for the human body to be contaminated by EEDs. This is because the food chain of aquatic organisms has a bioaccumulation effect. When the water quality of fish ponds, rivers, lakes and offshore waters is polluted, pollutants such as plasticizers and detergent metabolites will accumulate in the muscles of organisms such as fish, shrimps, crabs and clams through the food chain of "big fish eat small fish, small fish eat shrimps". Their content is 10 to 9,000 times higher than that in water. When these organisms are eaten by humans, they will naturally contaminate the human body.

Professor Cai pointed out that research by the Environmental Health Teaching and Research Section of the School of Public Health at Fudan University has confirmed that the content of plasticizers in the muscles of aquatic organisms (fish, shrimp, crabs, clams, mud snails, etc.) caught from polluted waters is 10 to 9,000 times higher than that in water, with a significant enrichment effect. He led a team to investigate and found that some domestic fish ponds had EEDs pollution problems. To this end, he suggested that children, especially those who are in the growth and development stage (neonatal period, puberty) and pregnant women, should try to avoid eating aquatic organisms caught from heavily polluted rivers, lakes and offshore waters. Aquatic life in the deep sea is not obviously polluted and is relatively safe to eat.

3Dietary factors are only one of the causes of precocious puberty in children. Organic pathological factors need more attention.

To understand the pathogenesis of precocious puberty, we must first know that precocious puberty is divided into true precocious puberty and false precocious puberty.

The causes of true precocious puberty are complex. It can be caused by organic diseases such as intracranial infection, trauma or tumors, or it can be the so-called idiopathic central precocious puberty for which no cause can be found.

There are many causes of pseudo-precocious puberty, but gonadal tumors, adrenal hyperplasia or tumors are the main causes.

After understanding the pathogenesis, we found that the main causes of precocious puberty are these organic diseases. Of course, in addition to reasons such as disease, precocious puberty may also be related to unreasonable diet, overnutrition, excess energy, and indiscriminate use of supplements. Clinically, it is common to see abnormal hormone levels in some obese children, and some little boys even have estrogen levels higher than adult women. However, when parents are preventing, judging and treating their children's precocious puberty, they must first rule out disease factors. It is unscientific to randomly suspect dietary factors, and it can easily delay the child's condition.