Girls today may be reaching puberty as much as four years
earlier than generations before them because their diets are
higher in calories, research from the University of Wisconsin-
Madison suggests. The findings - the first in primates to
document a connection between diet and body growth and earlier
puberty - appear in the latest issue of the journal
Endocrinology. The study does not suggest girls weigh
significantly more when they reach puberty. Rather, they hit a
weight associated with the start of puberty at an earlier age,
said Ei Terasawa, a professor of pediatrics in the School of
Medicine and Public Health who has studied puberty in rhesus
macaques since the 1970s at the Wisconsin National Primate
Research Center at UW. Rhesus monkeys are studied by biomedical
researchers because they are genetically and physiologically
similar to humans. The monkeys in the UW study reached puberty
six months to a year earlier than a control group of monkeys the
same age that consumed 33% fewer calories. The faster-ma