One More Damn Thing

I'm a vegetarian, and about 95 percent vegan, so this is something I pay a lot of attention to.

I have no proof, but I suspect that all of the soy products being sold as healthy are not as wonderful as the packaging would have you believe. Unfermented soy (tofu) just isn't that great for you--it has very high phytate content which is not reduced significantly when it is cooked. Those phytates prevent absorption of minerals from other foods and can lead to serious deficiencies in calcium, zinc, iron, etc. It's why soy isn't a big part of any indigenous diets around the world. And soy does raise estrogen levels--something that in large doses is just not good for a man. The article linked to is just dumb. This isn't a gay bashing issues. It is, however, a serious health question that doesn't get addressed objectively enough, because the soy processing industry is so big and has financed a lot of the research (can you trust what they determine, when they are not independent?)

One of the reasons soy is so popular is that it is cheap as hell to grow and when processed it takes on the taste and texture of just about anything else. However, the processing they do does not seem right... Read up about it, please. The processing is done at high heats, and includes mixing the soy with an alkaline solution, then washing it in acid in aluminum tanks (which leave aluminum residue in the final product), and then treating it with another alkaline solution to neutralize it. They then spray dry the curds at very high temperatures to create a powder, as is if that isn't enough to bastardize the bean, they pressurize it to create textured protein that they can mold into other things. All of that processing is just not natural. I have no proof that it is harmful, but I sure as hell don't trust that kind of frankenfood.

As I said, soy is incredibly cheap and it is versatile. The result is that it has worked its way into so many foods. People are consuming soy products that mimic other foods in increasingly greater quantities, and it may not be all that healthy. Making it worse, soy is a hidden ingredient in many packaged food products you'd never guess, so many people may have way too much soy in their diets. Pick up a jar of spaghetti sauce, for example, and check out the ingredients. The result is that people are getting great quantities of this suspect food, which is being processed in unnatural ways, and lord knows what the long-term health effects are.

The "soy is healthy" stuff has been promulgated by research financed by the industry itself... Because soy is so cheap, but had a crappy reputation, the processors, such as Archer Daniels Midland, launched this deliberate PR campaign in the 70s that has done a remarkable job of repositioning soy as a healthy food. All they really care about, though, is that soy is cheap and they can sell the soy products they make at a good mark up. Whether or not it's healthy is really a question that hasn't been answered well, not when a lot of the health claims are being based on the research being done by the industry itself.

The article linked to, is just dumb. But I personally try to avoid processed soy products. Read up about how they make soy into bacon or how they turn it into milk, and decide for yourself whether it sounds like it can be good.