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I was recently quoted in an article on soy in the Canadian magazine Maclean's available online here:
http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/12/04/will-soy-make-my-son-gay/
There were a number of comments, some of which I addressed myself. There was one long comment (#27) by "Loretta", which covered alot of territory. I couldn't help myself from answering, but the answer is too long to post with the comments, so I am going to link to it here:
Re: http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/12/04/will-soy-make-my-son-gay/#comment-69127
L: Why do people always think the 'meat or dairy boards' are trying to slam soy, without considering the massive industry of soy, one of the biggest and dirtiest businesses in the world. We can't blame the beef any longer for the disappearing rainforest.
B: I'm afraid we CAN blame beef (and other meat products) for the disappearing rainforest, as most of the world's soybean crop goes to animal feed. Nearly 80 percent of the global soybean harvest is milled into animal feed, according to the Worldwatch Institute.
http://www.nature.org/magazine/autumn2007/features/art21918.html
In addition: "..soybean oil accounted for 92 percent of the 250 million liters of biodiesel made in the United States, a recent use that is bound to grow as Americans turn to biofuels to replace imported oil.27 Similarly, 59 percent of Brazilian biodiesel came from soy."http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5442
L: Here's just a few of the errors/omissions/misconceptions in this article:
Messina is indeed a 'soy expert'. He's at the top of the soy industry food chain. His interest in soy is massive, it's called money.
B: Mark Messina, Ph.D., M.S., is an adjunct associate professor at Loma Linda University; co-owner of Nutrition Matters Inc. (a nutrition consulting firm); and executive director of the Soy Nutrition Institute. He served as program director for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and has published more than 50 articles and book chapters for health professionals. He has also given more than 400 presentations to both consumer and professional groups throughout the United States and in 35 countries.
So, yes, he makes his living (but "massive money"? Do you know something I don't know?) as a scientist in his field of expertise. He is a well-respected professional. Should we not consult real scientists? I could just as well criticize one of the WAPF board members, Joseph Mercola, who puts himself out there as a "nutrition expert", though he is actually an osteopath and entrepreneur, selling everything on his websites from bison to vitamins to cookware to coconut oil on his websites, plus membership programs, articles, etc. .
L: It's not the Western A. Price Foundation, but the Weston A. Price Foundation. They are not paid by the meat or dairy board. Their main slant is not to knock soy, but to advocate traditional foods, including hormone-free, grass-fed, compassionately farmed meats, fats that are not rancid and artificially processed, and chemical free whole foods. The foundation follows the work of Weston Price, a dentist, who went around the world to study tooth decay and health, expecting to find vegetarian cultures that fit his paradigm of health. His studies of nutritional anthropology and modern health advocate whole and traditional foods, as does the foundation. Dr. Kaayla Daniel, who is a member of the foundation, wrote a book called The Whole Soy Story.
B: I'm going to quote author John Robbins from an article at http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/robbins_weston_price.htm in answer to the above:
"Weston Price was an American dentist who traveled around the world, camera and film in hand, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. An entire chapter in my latest book, Healthy At 100, is devoted to his work.
Price specifically sought out native peoples who were still eating their native foods. He asked about their dietary habits, then examined and took photographs of their teeth. At the same time, he undertook similar studies and took similar photos of people from the same cultures who had become exposed to Western foods, and who had begun to substitute foods like white flour, white sugar, marmalade and canned goods for their native diets....
Today, Price's work has attracted a loyal and devoted following among those who rebel against processed foods and who seek a way of life more in tune with nature's laws. Some of his more ardent followers say his accomplishments are more important than those of Charles Darwin, Linus Pauling, or Jonas Salk, and that he was a greater genius than Albert Einstein. Others say his was the most important health research of all time.
Some of the most zealous of his followers now run an organization called the Weston A. Price Foundation. A book by the foundation's president, Sally Fallon, with the appealing title of Nourishing Traditions, has been a best-seller.
No doubt the foundation is doing good in awakening some people to the dangers of processed foods, but speaking as someone who has great respect for the work of Weston A. Price, I am sorry to say that to my eyes, the foundation that carries Price's name today is unfortunately exaggerating what was unbalanced in his work, and abandoning much of what was good.
For one thing, the foundation exudes an attitude of "you're either with us or you're against us" that is reminiscent of the dark side of cults. Those authors and researchers who the foundation disagrees with are caustically mocked. If these authors happen to subscribe to the findings of modern nutritional science, they are mocked and condemned for being "politically correct." Reputable scientists who dare suggest that saturated fat contributes to heart disease are denounced for being "as pc as pc can be—and totally ignorant."
Regrettably, those currently running the Weston A. Price Foundation seem to be oblivious to the spirit of compassion which motivated the work of the man under whose name they act. Sadly, they are not just intolerant of people who eat or think differently than the way they advocate; they frequently demean and condemn those with whom they disagree. There is a nastiness, a mean-spiritedness, to their activities that is not worthy of the man in whose footsteps they presume to follow.
In fact, the more I've gotten to know the Weston A. Price Foundation, the less I've felt that it is actually carrying on the spirit or the work of the man in whose name it purports to function. For one example, Price never once mentioned the words "soy," "soybean," "tofu," or "soy milk" in his 500 page opus, and spoke quite positively about lentils and other legumes, yet the foundation has taken it upon itself to be vehemently and aggressively anti-soy, calling soy foods "more insidious than hemlock." (My thorough response to their specific accusations against soy foods can be seen athttp://healthyat100.org/display.asp?catid=3&pageid=12
For another example, Price discovered many native cultures that were extremely healthy while eating lacto-vegetarian or pisco-vegan diets. Describing one lacto-vegetarian people, for example, he called them, "The most physically perfect people in northern India… the people are very tall and are free of tooth decay." Yet the foundation that operates under his name is strikingly hostile to vegetarians. Sally Fallon, the foundation's president, denounces vegetarianism as "a kind of spiritual pride that seeks …to shirk the earthly duties for which the physical body is created." She further insults vegetarians by saying they frequently suffer from zinc deficiency, but think it is spiritual enlightenment.
In 1934, Price wrote a moving letter to his nieces and nephews, instructing them in the diet he hoped they would eat. "The basic foods should be the entire grains such as whole wheat, rye or oats, whole wheat and rye breads, wheat and oat cereals, oat-cake, dairy products, including milk and cheese, which should be used liberally, and marine foods." Yet the Weston A. Price Foundation aggressively promotes the consumption of beef, pork and other high-fat meats, while condemning people who base their diets on whole grains.
One last example of the discrepancy between Price's actual work and those who today purport to represent it: Price never once mentioned the word "cholesterol," yet the foundation presuming to forward his work has declared war on the idea that high cholesterol levels are associated with higher rates of heart disease. "The truth is that cholesterol is your best friend," they write. "There is no greater risk of heart disease at cholesterol levels of 300 than 180." They might as well say there is no greater risk of lung cancer for heavy smokers, or that the Earth is flat.
I regret to say that those running the Weston A. Price Foundation today seem to have their own agenda. They are proponents of the philosophy that in order to be healthy, people must eat large amounts of saturated fat from animal products. They insist that only with the regular consumption of lard, butter and other full-fat dairy products, and beef, can people derive the nutrients they need to be healthy.
Toward that end, the Foundation has widely publicized an article written by a former member of the Foundation's Board of Directors, Stephen Byrnes, titled "The Myths of Vegetarianism."
The article is harshly critical of vegetarian diets, and concludes with an "About the Author" section which states: "Stephen Byrnes… enjoys robust health on a diet that includes butter, cream, eggs, meat, whole milk, dairy products and offal." In fact, Stephen Byrnes suffered a fatal stroke in June, 2004. According to reports of his death, he had yet to reach his 40th birthday."
In addition, the Foundation advises that vegetarian mothers should not breastfeed, and advises raw milk baby formulas and has a recipe for baby formula made from raw liver!
As for Kaayla Daniel (who also wrote a scare-mongering article in Mothering magazine and is on the Board of Directors of WAPF-- see the letter from some of the scientists she whose data she misinterprets--
http://www.mothering.com/sections/extras/soy-letters.htmlIt's the 6th letter),
to see where she is coming from, this is one of the recommendations in an article entitled "Why Broth is Beautiful" by Daniel (an article on the Weston A. Price website promoting gelatin for joint health, a notion that she admits even Knox gelatin doesn't endorse!):
"Boil a piece of pig skin for at least 3 hours until it becomes very soft. Eat it as is, with mustard or horseradish, or put it through a mincer and add it to other food. The important thing is regular use—a tablespoon or more every day, along with a diet that contains adequate animal protein and lots of nourishing animal fats. "
In this article she dredges up old studies that even Knox gelatin discarded claiming, among other things, that gelatin detoxifies the liver!
L: This whole idea that soy is a health food comes from- the soy industry! But the roots of soy are deep and dirty. Soy's big thrust here was as oil. Processed, poisonous 'vegetable oil.' You know, the stuff of margarine. Hydrogenated oil. Trans fat. Heart-healthy! the margarine companies chirped. For years we used the plastic on our food as a healthy alternate to butter. The cheap oil was used in all processed foods. Junk foods. As science came around, soy saw the bottom falling out of their market and began pumping another batch of health food stories. Think about it. Hydrogenated oil is one of the most toxic heart dangers, with ZERO as a safe limit. Why are the new 'health' products any different?
B: Scary stuff! A bit of excessive hyperbole there. Just because the soy industry is trying to sell its products (just like the coconut oil industry, the noni juice industry, the supplements industry, etc., etc.) doesn't mean that soy is "poison"! And you don't have to eat processed soy products, or any other processed products. And the roots of soy are in Asia, where it has been used as a food for centuries. According to Chinese tradition, soybeans were one of the five sacred crops named by Chinese emperor Sheng-Nung, who reigned five thousand years ago! Sheng-Nung mentioned soybeans in his Ben Tsao Gang Mu, written in 2838 BC! The soybean was known as "meat without bones" or "the meat of the fields" in China.
If the soybean was "poison", Asian cultures would not have thrived and become empire, and I would be dead! It's not only soy oil that is hydrogenated-- any oil can be hydrogenated. Most soy oil (which I don't use, BTW) is a by-product of processed soy for animal feed, so they sell it off to food processors and fast food companies, and for bio-diesal. if so much was not grown for animal feed, they would not be foisting all that oil on the world.
L: The quote from the Asian girl about the flat earth was very cute and so on, and strategically used to make us think that anyone who thinks soy is dangerous is a lunatic. Recall that at first, EVERYONE thought the earth was flat because that's what they were told. The insinuation is, if we are thinking soy is harmful, we are idiots. But considering the massive amounts of evidence against it, we are actually the first to stop believing in that flat earth and consider a wider science.
B: the "Asian girl" is actually a middle-aged master miso-maker (traditionally made Shinmeido Miso)! And I'm still waiting for the "massive amounts of evidence" from reliable sources.
L: I don't know the measurement of soy products in Asia, and I am not Asian, and I do believe many Asians eat soy products. However, Asian cultures eat a lot of fish, raw fish, and vegetables, and less processed foods or wheat-based products. There are many many reasons why they don't have our diseases. Also, Chinese cultures eat a lot of eggs and pork. I mean, A LOT. Maybe this is why they have less cancer?
B: Perhaps you should read "The China Study" by a true scientist Dr. T. Colin Campbell: "For more than 40 years, T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Study, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University and Project Director of the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project. The study was the culmination of a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine.
Dr. Campbell received his master's degree and Ph.D. from Cornell, and served as a Research Associate at MIT. He spent 10 years on the faculty of Virginia Tech's Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition before returning to the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell in 1975 where he presently holds his Endowed Chair (now Emeritus)."
Oh, and in case you are going to accuse him of being part of the "establishment", read Chapters 16 and 17 in his book he is definitely NOT an establishment darling!
You can obtain the China Project data through the Oxford University website; http://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/projects/cecology1989/
You can read about the study and link to results, comprehensive findings and papers about the study at
http://www.nutrition.cornell.edu/ChinaProject/results.html
For instance:
"Average protein intake [in China] was only about 65% of the average intake in the US. But, more significantly, only about 10% of the protein was provided by animal based foods, whereas in the US, it is about 70%. Thus, on an energy intake basis, animal protein intake is about 10-fold higher in the US, thus causing major differences in many nutrient intakes.
Probably one of the most significant findings is the positive association of animal protein with blood cholesterol (both total and LDL) and the inverse association with plant protein.
Also, an increasing intake of plant protein is associated with ever increasing body stature (height) reached during adulthood. Thus, a good quality plant based diet can lead to 'big' people." http://www.nutrition.cornell.edu/ChinaProject/results.html#Dietary%20Protein
and:
"Comparison of diets in rural China with average American diets shows that Chinese diets are much lower in total fat (6-24% of calories, except for certain nomadic groups in northern China), much higher in dietary fiber (10-77 g/day), about 30% higher in total calorie intake and substantially lower in foods of animal origin.
These diets are much different from the average American diets, containing only about 0-20% animal based foods, while the average American diet is comprised of about 60-80% animal based foods.
Disease patterns in much of rural China tend to reflect those prior to the industrial revolution in the U.S., when cancers and cardiovascular diseases were much less prevalent.
The major comprehensive dietary factor responsible for disease rates of pre-industrialized societies changing to those of post-industrialized societies is the decision to consume much larger quantities of animal based foods."
http://www.nutrition.cornell.edu/ChinaProject/results.html#Epidemiological%20Transition
L: Finally, there was no mention of something very important: soy foods in Asia are fermented. The entire miso-making culture was about learning fermentation secrets. Why is this important? Because unfermented soyfoods are poison. Soy beans were used as fertilizer, and fermenting the bean made it edible to the people, all those years ago. Asians do not eat isolated soy protein or vegetarian soy and gluten patties. They eat pork, fish, vegetables, and traditionally fermented tofu. Tofu here, and most soyfoods, are not fermented. The fermenting process removes many of the toxins in the soy. Go ahead, ask a real Asian miso maker why they ferment the soy. They'll tell you why.
B: It happens that I CAN ask a "real Asian miso-maker"-- Yoshi Yoshihara of Shinmeido Miso-- your "Asian girl"!
Unfermented soyfoods are not "poison" and are widely used in Asia in the forms of green soybeans, soymilk and fresh tofu. There is archaeological evidence in the form of a kitchen scene in a Han tomb in Northern China, clearly depicting the preparation of soymilk and tofu. This would be AD 25-100. Tofu is first mentioned in a document in 965 AD: the Ch'ing I Lu by T'ao Ku. The story implies that tofu was widely consumed in China in those days.
In Japan, even today, the words tofu, miso and shoyu (soy sauce) are commonly preceded in everyday speech by the honorific prefix o—most people saying "o-tofu", or "honorable tofu", showing the reverence for the noble soybean in their culture.
The following is from http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/darkside.html
"Soy proponents claim that soy is a staple in Asia. A "staple" is defined as a major commodity, one that provides a large portion of calories in the diet, such as rice and fish in Japan, or rice and pork in China. The Japanese consume 150 pounds of fish per person per year, or almost one-half pound per person per day and a 1977 dietary survey in China determined that 65 percent of calories came from pork, including the pork fat used in cooking. By contrast, overall consumption of soy in Asia is surprisingly low. The average soy consumption in China is about 10 grams or 2 teaspoons per day. Levels are somewhat higher in Japan, averaging about 50 grams or 1/4 cup per day. (I assume that this is grams of soy product, but which one, I don't know-BCG.) In both countries, soy is used as a condiment or flavoring, and not as a substitute for animal foods. Seafood and seaweed in the Japanese diet provide sufficient iodine to counteract the negative effects of the isoflavones in soy."
Now read the following from this article , by registered dietician Reed Mangels:
http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2003issue3/vj2003issue3hotline.htm
"If we look at the amount of soy isoflavones used in countries where soy is a regular part of the diet and where no harmful effects have been documented, perhaps this can give us some idea of a reasonable amount of soy. The average daily soy intake in Japan is about 65 grams per person, and the average isoflavone intake is about 20-32 milligrams per day. Higher intakes have been reported in China, where women's median isoflavone intake was 39 milligrams per day, and in Singapore, where the median intake was 35 milligrams per day. To find out the isoflavone level of your diet, use the USDA's isoflavone database, or look on packages of soy foods that you eat. Choosing 2-3 servings of soy per day will generally lead to an isoflavone intake similar to that seen in countries where soy is a regular part of the diet."
Notice the footnotes inserted in and listed under the article—something noticeably lacking from from the WAPF article!
Anti-soy writers put forth the theory that "non-fermented soy products contain phytic acid [phytates] which essentially acts as an anti-nutritive food because of its ability to bind with certain nutrients, including iron, zinc, copper and magnesium, thereby inhibiting their absorption." This is a gross over-simplification and misinterpretation of the facts, frankly. Nnot only fermenting, but also cooking, sprouting and soaking all destroy some of the phytates! (And soy is not the only food that contains phytates. Wheat bran has higher levels, and all whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, and some vegetables, contain them.) Soyfoods are ALWAYS eaten cooked. Even soy sprouts are eaten stir-fried or lightly steamed or in soups in China. Green soybeans are also lightly cooked before eating. Soymilk and tofu are both made from ground, cooked soybeans. Soybeans and soy flour are virtually inedible raw, anyway.
L. Finally, if the aim is to make soy dissidents feel like neanderthal redneck homophobes, whatever. I'm pretty in pink, believe me. But that doesn't change the fact that hormone disruption is a dangerous thing. Artificial or natural, screwing with your hormone function is risky business. Plants are drugs, don't forget. Chemical drugs are based on plant science. So it makes sense, just possibly, that estrogen might not be a good idea to feed either boys or girls. You have the estrogen you need already. It's not about making anyone gay. It's about girls menstruating before age ten and little boys growing moobs. It is happening out there. It makes sense to question the hormones in meat, the estrogen in plastics, and the estrogen in soy foods.
B: Plant estrogens are simply NOT the same thing as human estrogens! They are much, much weaker. As I wrote in an earlier post: "The phytoestrogens in soy are structurally similar to human estrogen, but very weak compared to the estrogens that the human body produces. They bind with estrogen receptors in the human body. Isoflavones, found in soy, are only one type of phyto (or plant) hormone or sterol. There are many others available in a number of plant foods.
Isoflavones resemble animal (or human, in this case) estrogens just enough to be accepted by cell estrogen receptors and bind weakly to the cell surface membrane. The estrogen receptors have been compared to "tiny switching stations", "locks" or "docking stations" on the cells. Joanna Dwyer and colleagues at the New England Medical Center and Tufts University theorized in an article they wrote for The Journal of The American Dietetic Association (July 1994) that in premenopausal women the estrogen receptors are occupied and the weaker plant estrogens must compete for these sites. However, in postmenopausal women, whose self-produced estrogen declines about 60%, there is a far greater chance of the plant estrogens "docking" and this can increase the amount of estrogens available to her. For this reason, phytoestrogens are believed to protect against breast and prostate cancers, two hormone-dependent cancers."
The only guys I know with "man boobs" are obese chronic hamburger eaters, and there is plenty of evidence that girls in Asia and Seventh Day Adventist vegetarian girls (who eat alot of soy-- and not necessarily tofu, but lots of burgers and that sort of soyfood-- have a slightly LATER menarche than the average north American girl. it is not a matter of controversy-- look it up. What is happening out there is synthetic xenoestrogens flooding our world.
