Rodent diets may have skewed decades of research
I’ll add this one into my vast collection of “I had no idea” new items. As someone who performed experiments, and worked closely with many other scientists who performed many experiments, on rodents fed commercial rodent chow, I have to say that I don’t recall a single discussion about the contents of the chow, outside of caloric and fat content. Phytoestrogens?! And I’m not talking about just any experiments, I’m talking about experiments in models of breast cancer and osteoporosis, conditions where the presence of pharmacological concentrations of dietary estrogens, albeit weak phytoestrogens, would certainly be of interest. It’s strange, now that I think about it, because we obsessed about the presence of weak estrogens in cell media–I distinctly remember how Katzenellenbogen’s discovery that Phenol Red was a weak estrogen immediately altered the cell-feeding practices of the entire breast-cancer research field. So why didn’t we obsess over the presence of weak estrogens in the diet of test animals? Strange that. I’ll be interested to learn more about the range of soy-derived phytoestrogens in rodent chow: Was it really enough to influence findings? What about other types of chow: dog and monkey in particular? What facts have been established that must now be called into question?
