The British Food Journal Volume 62 Issue 9 1960

The news last December that the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration had banned at central level about eleven million pounds of chicken for human food because minute quantities of the synthetic oestrogen, stilboestrol, had been found in them was bound before very long to produce lurid speculation on the possible effects on humans, quite apart from the fact that the substance is considered to be a possible carcinogen. The speculation has arrived. It is in fact more than speculation, since it alleges that because Americans consume so much chicken—more than any other race—they must also be consuming more synthetic oestrogens and that American men are acquiring feminine curves and contours, a direct result of upsetting their oestrogen balance by eating oestrogenised chicken! Without doubt, American men do bulge in various places, as men who eat and sit too much have always done, but the bulges do not have a feminine distribution! All of which is by no means to say that the increasing use of synthetic hormones and similar substances is without risk or that some form of control is not necessary, even though their object is an increase in food production.