Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

There is an email running around that warns women to avoid eating chicken wings to prevent ovarian cysts. Is this email true?

• Urban Legends Reference Pages: Horrors (Wing Ding)

Snopes explains the underlying fear of this email:

“Hormones are linked in our minds (as they should be) with the growth process, which in humans is strongly tied to changes related to sexual maturation. Ergo, that fear finds voice in stories about women exposed to such hormones developing cysts in their reproductive systems and in stories about men developing the physical characteristics of women (that is, growing breasts).”

But they assure us that our fears are not true:

“The FDA has ruled that ‘No steroid hormones are approved for use in poultry,’ so chickens intended for human consumption in the U.S. cannot legally be fed or injected with steroids.”

There are so many legitimate things to be scared of, don’t let these email chain letters fill you with fears that aren’t a problem yet.