Pill may be behind lift in breast size

The contraceptive pill may be the cause of breast sizes growing in recent years.

Auckland bra manufacturer Bendon has said that sales of D cup bras between 1995 and 1999 grew 4 per cent and DD cup sales increased 6 per cent while sales of A cup bras fell 6 per cent.

Auckland Hospital endocrinologist Dr Mike Croxson said that as New Zealanders continued to grow taller and put on more weight, women's breast sizes increased.

Larger women tended to have larger breasts, but this did not explain slim young women with big busts, he said. A more likely alternative was changing sex habits.

More and more young New Zealand women from the age of 13 were on the pill, Dr Croxson said.

"It's well known that oral contraceptives increase breast size ... "

Bendon brand manager Catriona Stewart said lingerie stores were being flooded by teenagers with very large busts.

"Our shop assistants have noticed younger girls' breasts are getting bigger at an earlier age - far more teenagers are now wearing a 10D-10DD sized bra ... slim girls coming in really full cup sizes."

She said she believed a change in diet to apparently hormone-rich chicken was causing the nation's young breasts to swell.

Endocrinologist Warrick Inder, at Christchurch Hospital, said the relationship between oestrogen levels in diet and breast size was dubious, and it had nothing to do with eating chicken. Breast size had more to do with body fat.