Lavender: Yep, It's Girly

A couple of weeks ago, the CSA gave us fresh lavender. If I may make use of gender stereotypes for a moment, all of the women in the CSA squealed and said, "yay, lavender, I'll dry it and put in my clothes drawers to make everything smell nice!", while all of the men kinda squinted and said, "uh, can you eat it?" Actually, that's not stereotyping, that's exactly what happened.

I, of course, decided to cook with it, and found this recipe for lavender hazelnut bread, and made it that weekend. It was OK. The lavender scent was fairly mild, and the base bread was merely fair. It did make for a pretty good picture, though:


I took the rest of the rosemary, dried it upside down in a paper bag, and put the dried rosemary in a jar to use, somehow, at some undetermined point in the future... Time passed...

And then, last week, I got an issue of Science News that filled me with horror, and not just any horror, but emasculated horror!


The article (subscription required) starts as follows:

Two ingredients common in many hair- and skin-care products have been linked to abnormal development of breasts in boys. Lavender oil and tea tree oil contain compounds that act like female sex hormones and interfere with male hormones, researchers have determined.

That's right, a major component of lavender acts like estrogen, and when boys used shampoo or other products containing lavender oil, they grew breasts. When they stopped using the products, the breasts went away in a few months. It probably works on pre-pubescent girls, too, in the sense that if you give them hair or skin products with lavender, they may start developing early.

Spread the word...!

(Original lavender image from Ziggiu)