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By
Sean Carson
Faster than you can say "isoflavone," the humble soybean
has insinuated itself into a dominant position in the standard diet.
And that shouldn’t be a surprise.
Cheap, versatile and karma-free, soy in the 1990s went from obscurity
as vegan-and-hippie staple to Time magazine. With mad cows lurking
between whole wheat buns, and a growing distrust of conventionally-produced
dairy products, soy seemed like the ideal choice, the perfect protein.
But like all seemingly perfect things, a shadow lurked. By the
final years of the last decade, a number of soy researchers began
to cry foul. Soy Good? Soy Bad?
As the soy industry lobbied the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
for a cardiovascular health claim for soy protein, two senior FDA
scientists, Daniel Sheehan and Daniel Doerge--both specialists in
estrogen research--wrote a letter vigorously opposing such a claim.
In fact, they suggested a warning might be more appropriate.
Their Concern?
Two isoflavones found in soy, genistein and daidzen, the same two
promoted by the industry for everything from menopause relief to
cancer protection, were said to "demonstrate toxicity in estrogen
sensitive tissues and in the thyroid." Moreover, "adverse
effects in humans occur in several tissues and, apparently, by several
distinct mechanisms." Sheehan also quoted a landmark study
(Cassidy, et al. 1994), showing that as little as 45 mg of isoflavones
could alter the length of a pre-menopausal woman’s menstrual
cycle.
The scientists were particularly concerned about the effects of
these two plant estrogens on foetuses and young infants, because
"development is recognized as the most sensitive life stage
for estrogen toxicity."
It wasn’t the first time scientists found problems with soy,
but coupled with a Hawaiian study by Dr. Lon White on men, the controversy
ended up on national television. While industry scientists criticized
both the White study and the two FDA researchers (who are now disallowed
from commenting publicly on the issue), other researchers weighed
in on the anti-soy side. The tofu’d fight had begun.
What About Asia?
One of the favourite mantras of soy advocates is that the ubiquitous
bean has been used "safely by Asians for thousands of years."
With many soy "experts" (often with ties to the soy industry)
recommending more than 250 grams of soy foods--and in some cases,
more than 100 mg of isoflavones each day--it’s easy to get
the impression that soy plays a major role in the Asian diet. If
you saw it on TV or read it in a magazine, it must be true, right?
Well, not exactly.
Sally Fallon, president of the Weston
A. Price Foundation and author of Nourishing
Traditions, responds that the soy industry and media have spun
a self-serving version of the traditional use of soy in Asia. "The
tradition with soy is that it was fermented for a long time, from
six months to three years, and then eaten as a condiment, not as
a replacement for animal foods," she says.
Fallon states that the so-called Asian diet--far from centring
around soy--is based on meat. Approximately 65 percent of Japanese
calorie intake comes from fish in Japan, while in China the same
percentage comes from pork. "They’re not using a lot of
soy in Asia--an average of 2 teaspoons a day in China and up to
a quarter cup in some parts of Japan, but not a huge amount."
Contrast that with modern America, home of "if a little is
good for you, more must be better." Walk into any grocery store,
especially the health-oriented variety, and you’ll find the
ever-present bean. Soy is found in dozens and dozens of items: granola,
vegetarian chilli, a vast sundry of imitation animal foods, pasta,
most protein powders and "power" bars, and even something
called "nature’s burger," which, given the kind of
elaborate (and often toxic) processing that goes into making soy
isolate and TVP, would make Mother Nature wince.
There’s even a bread--directly marketed to women--containing
more than 80 mg of soy isoflavones per serving, which is more than
the daily dose in purified isoflavone supplements. All of this,
in addition to the traditional soy fare of tempeh, tofu, miso and
soy sauce. It’s no wonder that Californians are edamame dreaming.
So, while Asians were using limited to moderate amounts of painstakingly
prepared soy foods--the alleged benefits of which are still controversial--Americans,
especially vegetarians, are consuming more soy products and isoflavones
than any culture in human history, and as one researcher put it,
"entering a great unknown."
Oddly, nowhere in industry promotion does anyone differentiate
between traditional, painstakingly prepared "Asian" soy
foods and the modern, processed items that Fallon calls "imitation
food." And therein lies the rub. Modern soy protein foods in
no way resemble the traditional Asian soy foods, and may contain
carcinogens like nitrates, lysinoalanine, as well as a number of
anti-nutrients that are only significantly degraded by fermentation
or other traditional processing.
"People need to realize that when they’re eating these
soy foods--and I’m not talking about miso or tofu--but soy
"burgers," soy "cheese," soy "ice cream,"
and all of this stuff, that they are not the real thing. They may
look like the real thing and they may taste like the real thing,
but they do not have the life-supporting qualities of real foods,"
Fallon says.
There’s No Business Like Soy Business
"The reason there’s so much soy in America is because
they started to plant soy to extract the oil from it and soy oil
became a very large industry," says lipid specialist and nutritionist
Mary Enig, PhD. "Once they had as much oil as they did in the
food supply they had a lot of soy protein residue left over, and
since they can’t feed it to animals, except in small amounts,
they had to find another market."
According to Enig, female pigs can only ingest it in amounts approximating
one percent during their gestational phase and a few percent greater
during their lactation diet, or else face reproduction damage and
developmental problems in the piglets. "It can be used for
chickens, but it really has limitations. So, if you can’t feed
it to animals, than you find gullible human beings, and you develop
a health claim, and you feed it to them."
In a co-written article, Enig and Fallon state that soybean producers
pay a mandatory assessment of one-half to one percent of the net
market price of soybeans to help fund programs to "strengthen
the position of soybeans in the marketplace and maintain and expand
foreign markets for uses for soybeans and soy products."
They also cite advertising figures--multi-million dollar figures--that
soy-oriented companies like Archer Daniels Midland or ADM spend
for spots on national television. Money is also used to fund PR
campaigns, favourable articles and lobbying interests. A relaxation
of USDA rules has lead to an increase in soy use in school lunches.
Far from being the "humble" or "simple" soybean,
soy is now big business--very big business. This is not your father’s
soybean.
There’s been such a rush to market isoflavones that the before-mentioned
multinational corporation, ADM, in 1998, petitioned the FDA for
GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status for soy isoflavones.
For those who don’t know GRAS, the designation is used for
foods, and in some cases, food additives, that have been used safely
for many years by humans. For those who didn’t know--like a
number of protesting scientists--that soy isoflavones had been widely
used by generations of Americans before the late 1950s, it was a
revelation indeed. Ahem.
Dr. Sheehan, in his 1998 letter
to the FDA referenced earlier, states "that soy protein
foods are GRAS is in conflict with the recent return by CFSAN to
Archer Daniels Midland of a petition for GRAS status for soy protein
because of deficiencies in reporting the adverse effects in the
petition. Thus GRAS status has not been granted." And what
about those safety issues?
Requiem for a Thyroid
One of the biggest concerns about high intake of soy isoflavones
is their clearly defined toxic effect on the thyroid gland. You
don’t have to work too hard to convince Dr. Larrian Gillespie
of that. Dr. Gillespie, author of The Menopause Diet, in the name
of scientific empiricism, decided to run her own soy experiment--on
herself. She notes that she fits the demographic soy isoflavones
are most marketed to: borderline hypothyroid, menopausal females.
"I did it in two different ways. I tried the (isoflavone)
supplements (at 40mg), where I went into flagrant hypothryoidism
within 72 hours, and I did the ‘eat lots of tofu category,’
and it did the same thing, but it took me five days with that. I
knew what I was doing but it still took me another seven to 10 days
to come out of it."
Harvard-trained medical doctor Richard Shames, MD, a thyroid specialist
who has had a long time practice in Marin, says that "genistein
is the most difficult for the metabolic processes of people with
low thyroid, so when you have that present in high enough concentrations,
the result is an antagonism to the function of thyroid hormone."
"If you’re a normal person, and one in 10 are not normal,
the effect [of 50 mg of soy isoflavones] may be fairly insignificant,
but even a normal person can have problems at levels greater than
that," says Shames.
Dr. Gillespie says the daily amount to cause thyroid problems may
be as low as 30 mg, or less than a serving of soymilk.
A number of soy proponents say the thyroid concerns are exaggerated
and that if dietary iodine is sufficient, problems won’t likely
happen. Not so, says Shames: "Iodine is a double-edged sword
for people with thyroid problems, and for those people, more is
going to increase their chance for an autoimmune reaction ... throwing
iodine at it is not going to be the protective solution." Shames
recommends limiting soy foods to a few times a week, preferably
fermented or well cooked.
Birth Control Pills for Babies?
Environmental toxicologist Mike Fitzpatrick, PhD says he doesn’t
have it out for soy. His original concern was for babies: "They
were getting more soy isoflavones, at least on a bodyweight basis,
than anybody else," he notes. "It wasn’t so much
that I knew what that would do, but that I didn’t know what
that would do." Fitzpatrick, who is also webmaster of ... Soy
Online Services (www.soyonline-service.co.nz), a Web site devoted
to informing people about the potential problems with soy, stresses
the potential dangers for the developing human body: "Any person
with any kind of understanding of environmental endocrine disruptors,
compounds [like isoflavones] that are not in the body normally and
can modify hormones and the way they work in the body, any expert
will say that infants need to avoid these things like the plague."
Fitzpatrick was quoted--and misquoted--worldwide a few years ago
when he suggested that the isoflavones in soy formula were the equivalent
of birth control pills: "When I first did my review, I did
compare the estrogenic equivalents of the contraceptive pill with
how much soy infants and adults would be consuming," he says.
"It’s at least the equivalent
of one or two estrogen pills a day, on an estrogenic basis.
I’ve been criticised that it’s not the same form of estrogen,
but in terms of estrogenicity, it’s a crude but valid and alarming
statistic."
The typical response by industry experts has been to downplay the
uniqueness of soy isoflavones, stating--accurately--that isoflavones
of various kinds are prevalent in most fruits, vegetables, and legumes.
Is it Time to Toss Out the Apple Sauce?
"No, you’re not going to do that because you get exposure
from all kinds of things, but the exposure you get from soy is way,
way higher," Fitzpatrick says. "Soy formula is going to
give babies a real whack, far in excess of what you might find in
apples. Soy is a very rich source of isoflavones--that’s how
the industry markets its product. You don’t see an apple extract
to help women deal with menopause."
You’ve got to wonder how the industry can market soy isoflavones
as a form of estrogen replacement therapy for menopausal women (and
a host of other health claims) and still claim that soy formula
is safe for infants. And while the mechanism for biological activity
is clearly defined, the industry keeps repeating the same tune:
"no credible evidence exists."
But credible for whom? Says Fitzpatrick: "We’re not talking
about little studies here but long-term effects on infants and adults,
and that’s what concerns me. It’s very trite. They (the
industry) give half-baked answers. What you really need is long-term
studies." Likewise, "no credible evidence" is not
good enough for Dr. Naomi Baumslag, professor of paediatrics at
Georgetown University Medical School. She joined a host of others
in criticising a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), purported to be the definitive study on soy
formula safety.
"It was not an acceptable epidemiological study--you can take
it to any decent epidemiologist and hear what they think about it,
and they use it to say that soy is safe," says Baumslag. "It’s
totally unsubstantiated."
Manganese Madness
Besides the dangers of prematurity and other reproductive problems
posed by isoflavones, Baumslag mentions the high levels of the mineral
manganese (no, not magnesium) often found in soy formula. The problem
of manganese is so serious that even one
soy manufacturer put warning labels on its soymilk.
The company’s president, in a press release, stated that "there
is mounting evidence of a correlation between manganese in soy milk
(including soy-based infant formula) and neurotoxicity in small
infants." With manganese toxicity known for producing behavioural
disorders, the press release even goes further stating, "If
research continues, showing that the current epidemic levels of
ADHD in children, as well as impulsivity and violence among adolescents,
are connected with the increase in soy-based infant formula use,
our industry could suffer a serious setback by not dealing with
the issue upfront."
With all the potential problems with soy formula, Baumslag notes
that formula is also missing key immunological factors only found
in mother’s milk, the lack of which could give a child a life
sentence of chronic health problems. She links soy-pushing to corporate
profits and the PR campaigns that they fund.
"There’s been so much PR in regards to soy formula and
I think you also have to ask yourself why it’s so much cheaper
for them to make, which means there’s more profit. How come
only one percent in the UK are on formula, where it’s closer
to 30 percent in the United States? I don’t know why it’s
so important for them to push soy, they should push breast-feeding."
Perhaps it’s because breast milk for babies isn’t as lucrative
as milking the soybean for profits.
Caveat Emptor
As a former vegan--and big soy-eater--I’m disturbed by the
vast array of modern, processed soy products that have come on the
market in the last few years, without any recognition of potential
pitfalls. Safe bet: If it hasn’t been eaten safely for thousands
of years, you probably shouldn’t put it at the center of your
diet. We’ve been sold a bill of goods that says "soy is
good for you," but it doesn’t tell you what kind of soy
or how much, or even definitively if soy really is what makes Asians
so supposedly healthy.
It’s well known that the Japanese also eat a very large amount
of omega-3 fatty acids from fish each day--substances which have
been clearly shown to have anti-cancer and anti-heart disease effects.
So, is it the soy or is it the fish? As the industry spends millions
and millions of dollars to find something that isoflavones are good
for--some health claim to justify their unprecedented presence in
the American diet--I have to ask: why are they trying so hard? Why
is there such a push to push soy?
Soy isoflavones are clearly biologically active--they affect change
in your body. It’s no longer acceptable for the industry to
see no bad, hear no bad, and speak no bad. Legitimate concerns need
to be studied--and not studies funded by the industry, conducted
by soy scientists.
In the meantime, I’ve located a wonderful, old miso company
on the north coast. They age their miso for three years in wood
barrels and sell it in glass jars. It’s rich, earthy and real.
I enjoy a teaspoon in a glass of hot water a few times a week after
dinner. It tastes lively and feels good. I no longer get the "urge"
to eat soy "dogs" or soy "burgers," though I
now suspect that urge didn’t come from my own instinct, but
from the lofty dictates of the soy experts.
But why wait years while ignorant armies clash over this and that
isoflavone and studies that say one thing or another? Perhaps the
safest way to use soy, if you choose to use soy, is the way it’s
been used by Asians for thousands of years: fermented, in moderation,
as a condiment. In short, color me cautious.
Sean
Carson is a freelance writer and editor living in the
San Francisco Bay Area. He is also a student of traditional
Chinese medicine and acupuncture and can be reached at:
devanand54@yahoo.com.
This article may not be reprinted either online or offline
without the permission of the author.
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