I'm excited to introduce Dr. Christine Dennis, our new senior research scientist,

who has been researching and scripting new video topics and, as you're here today, narrating some as well.

In this video, Christine delves into the association between vegetarian diets and hypospatious birth defects to see if it holds

up in the light of new research.

In 2000, a study found that a vegetarian diet during pregnancy was associated with hypospadias,

a specific birth defect of the penis.

The author suggested that it may be due to the greater exposure to phytoestrogens, which are found in soy foods.

But if you look globally, while there is an extraordinarily high prevalence in North America and Europe,

it's extremely low in a country like Japan, which has the highest per capita soy intake in the world.

In fact, in Japan, a low maternal intake of soy phytoestrogens has been associated with

elevated risk of hypospatias. So if anything, soy may be protective. If soy foods aren't

the hormone disruptors, what in a vegetarian diet might be? Well, occupational exposure to pesticides

is associated with higher risk. So might low-level pesticide exposure among those eating more

fruits and vegetables, like vegetarians,

help explain it?

If you randomize people to a more plant-based Mediterranean diet, you see a large increase

in the amount of pesticides flowing through their body.

Though, of course, if you put them on a Mediterranean diet with organic fruits and vegetables,

you see a 90% drop in

pesticide exposure. So does organic food consumption during pregnancy reduce hypospatius risk? Apparently so,

cutting the odds about in half, particularly when it comes to choosing organic vegetables and dairy.

Though the only other study to look at organic food choices and hypospadias

...