As American prepares to sit down to a fine Thanksgiving feast, they should be thankful that -- unlike USA athletes -- the turkey at dinner is steroid free. In the US, it has been illegal to pump up the turkeys with steroids for decades. However, the athletes we watch today, may be full of some juiced gravy. To the LA Times:
Here are a couple more turkey facts to get your teeth into -- one of them something you don't need to think about.
You may see some turkeys advertised as "hormone free." The Foster Farms website -- to name just one example -- says of its fresh turkey: "You can feel good about serving it to your family as we promise that it will be the freshest available at your store and will never contain added hormones or steroids."
The Whole Foods Market website also proclaims that its turkeys lack added growth hormones -- and then notes, in small letters, that "federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones in raising pork and poultry."
However, unlike many American athletes, those turkeys are not pumped full of the sauce:
So don't be overly impressed by such claims. It's been illegal to treat poultry with hormones since the 1950s. "And they were never, ever used in turkeys," says Francine Bradley, extension poultry specialist in the Animal Science
Department at UC Davis.
In short, the only hormones turkeys have are the ones they produce themselves.
Similarly, any claim you may see about a steroid void is another red herring since the use of any steroids in turkey production is also illegal.
If a sports fan eats too much this Thanksgiving, try to avoid the example of those NFL players who used StarCaps, full of a diuretic which will rid you of those excess pounds...dangerously.
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