09 September 2010

Soy Is The Devil, And Not In A Fun Way

The mythology of the Devil is actually pretty fascinating.  I'm not going to spend an hour recounting the entire etymology of the word Satan, the historical concept of the Devil, or pantheistic demonology, though I assure you, that shit is tremendously interesting.  Once you've followed every link you can from that one, you'll have a clear understanding of what the Devil represents- pure evil.  Across every Mediterranean-based religion since ancient Egypt, however, there's existed a malevolent energy or god with which people then and now have concerned themselves.  Innumerable methods have been articulated for ridding themselves of this evil, ranging from exorcisms to jihad to a hell of a lot of prayer.  I'm not advocating any of that, and I'm informing you about a much greater evil than the entity who is conventionally referred to as the Devil- I'm referring to soy.  Would an exorcism help?  Likely not, but there are some executives at Ralston-Purina and DuPont who could do with some stabbing.
The devil in a fun way.

For those of you who are unaware, there's currently a massive push to get soy into the diets of Americans, allegedly due to the magical health-improving effects of the soybean.  Apparently positing that the American diet is bereft of soy, and that the Chinese and Japanese can fly, live to 200 years of age, and never get cancer due to their constant inhalation of so, various special interest groups have funded studies alleging this bean's magical properties.  This is, of course, utter horseshit.

  1. Americans eat far more soy, per capita, than any other people on Earth.  In 2005, Americans ate 25,261,750 tons of soy.  That breaks down to 0.0852255847 tons of soy a year (25,261,750/296,410,404), or 170 lbs a year.  The Chinese, by comparison, ate only (50957450 / 1315844000) 0.0387260572 tons per person, or 77 lbs.  This is fucking retarded.(Swivel for the soy, and Wikipedia for the population)
  2. According to health activist and occasional kook Joseph Mercola, soy may increase the risk of breast cancer in women, brain damage in both men and women, and abnormalities in infants, contribute to thyroid disorders (especially in women), promote kidney stones, weaken the immune system, and cause severe, potentially fatal food allergies. (Mercola)
  3. Soy contains isoflavones, plant hormones that have been shown to have an estrogenic effect on the body (it mimics the actions of estrogen, which reduces test levels and inhibit muscular hypertrophy. (Nutrient Timing, 128)
  4. Biological changes in the function of sex glands, central nervous system, and thyroid are attributable to soy isoflavones.  Soy also contains phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that blocks the uptake of calcium, zinc, and magnesium.  Low zinc throws copper levels out of balance, and high levels of copper can depress thyroid function. (Crazy Makers, 81-82)
  5. Many beans contain toxic compounds designed to dissuade animals from eating them, and soybeans are no different.  Raw soybeans contain antienzymes, hemagglutinin, phytates and goitrogens, which will have varying effects on people based on the biological individuality, but are toxic nonetheless.  (Neanderthin, 56)

I realize that at this point, half of you are scoffing at these claims, having eaten soy your entire lives, and immense amounts of it.  Before you get too haughty, consider this- Americans are fatter, less libidinous, weaker, and more pathetic than ever, and we're eating unprecedented amounts of soy.

Why are we eating so much soy?  Because agribusiness is filled with evil assholes who hate you, and they line the pockets of politicians who also hate you and are looking for ways to make you more dependent on them, so that the politicians will do what they'd do on their own a little more quickly.  According to Joseph Mercola, soy began in the US as a product that in 1913 was listed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an industrial product, rather than a food.  (Mercola)  Although the soybean was introduced in the US a couple centuries prior to that, it didn't really carry much weight until is was picked up by none other than Henry Ford as a super-bean he primarily used to make plastics and textiles- Ford bragged that two bushels of soybeans went into each car he sold, and even wore a suit made of faux silk (made of soy) on a daily basis. This fiber never really caught on, having been beaten by DuPont's nylon, but illustrates the fact that soy was initially considered to be primarily for industrial use.  Ford's experimentation with soy milk eventually led to Ralston-Purina's widespread use of soy in animal feed, due in large part to the fact that soy is incredibly cheap to farm and process.  
18 year old, hot as fuck Swedish chicks could kick most American males' asses.

As the years passed, and soy made its slow transition into the American diet, that industry received a welcome boost from the findings of the Club of Rome, a global think tank who focusses on political issues, and wishes "to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public."(Wikipedia)  The Club produced their seminal work in 1972, called the Limits to Growth, which was essentially a dire prediction that the Earth's industrialized societies would collapse under their own weight and the combined scarcity of petroleum and food.  This book was an outgrowth of the Malthusian catastrophe theory of Thomas Malthus, which "was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production," and it led to a variety of well-received and well-regarded works of Malthusian dystopic fiction.  The two best-known works in this genre are The Wanting Seed, by Anthony Burgess, and Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, both of which depict a future Earth plagued by overpopulation.  Both books are fucking awesome, by the way, if you like dystopic fiction, and Harrison's book was made into the epic Soylent Green.  From works like these, people picked up the notion that meat would eventually be impossible to come by or unbelievably expensive (see just about any science fiction novel written in the last 30 years for evidence of this) and nearly all of which prophesied that soy would be the meat of the future.
In I Come In Peace, Dolph protects us from a likely soy-loving evil alien.

This momentum made it easy for companies like Ralston-Purina and DuPont to ramp up their soy production, and start fleecing the fuck out of our politicians.  The politicians, greedy, soulless sacks of shit that they are, eventually changed the protein rating systems to make soy look good, which afforded those companies the opportunity to make ridiculous claims about the bioavailability of soy.  (Body Opus, 76)  Lobbyists are the reason there are so many different rating systems for protein- not scientists.  To wit, there are the following rating systems for protein:


Biological value (BV)
Net protein Utilization (NPU)
Protein Efficiency Ratio (PER)
Nitrogen Balance (NB)
Protein digestibility (PD)
Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

Just within BV, you can get two different rankings for protein, one of which places soy at the same level as whey for bioavailability, and another that ranks it at about 3/4 of whey.  PDCAAS is the newest, and thus ranks soy on par with egg, whey, and casein, while NPU, one of the oldest, ranks whey at 92 and soy at 61.  Suspicious?  I sure as fuck am.

Up next- Will soy make men's cocks fall off and have them grow tits, and will it make women even womenier?  Studies have shown that it might...


Another pic of the above chick- Sarah Bäckman, Swedish National armwrestling champ, and painfully, ridiculously hot chick who would rip your arm off and beat you to death with it, given a reason to do so.

Sources:
Joseph Mercola.  http://mercola.com/2004/jan/21/soy.htm
Ivy, John.  Nutrient Timing
Simontacchi, Carol.  The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying our Brains and Hurting our Children.
Audette, Ray.  Neanderthin.
Duchaine, Dan.  Body Opus.

39 comments:

  1. Walk around any organic grocery store will prove to anyone that people who eat soy regularly are flat-out fucked in the head!

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  2. What do you know about Lecithin? I've read several times that some porn stars take it as a supplement to make them shoot bigger loads. I don't know if that's true or not as I've only ever read it online. I do know that lecithin is a form of soy though.

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  3. I know from experience lecithin will give you a huge load. But so will taking a mega dose of tribulis up to 4 grams a day. I'd go with the tribulis.

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  4. Don't forget Soy Milk, for all those lactose intolorent people. Not only is milk bad enough the creation of soy milk is ten fold lol. I had a chick at school who fed her child soy milk all the time and he loved it. Of course as predicted he was and still grossly overweight with big boy/man titties lol. poor kid.

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  5. Um, Glen, why would something that makes your nuts smaller make your loads bigger?

    Lecithin is a bunch of fatty acids that act as an emulsifier. It's also found in egg yolks, not just soy.

    Kind of makes sense that if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your huevos, you ought to be eating eggs.

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  6. What is it about Swedish chicks?!? I think some of the fittest and most badass ladies come from Sweden.

    Oh, and agreed about soy. I've been trying to tell people forever that it's terrible stuff.

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  7. Brb, going to Sweden for a while.

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  8. Maybe the stories of porn stars using lecithin are just urban myths.

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  9. They definitely use something- they look like they're firing off a bucket of primer half the time.

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  10. soy is a fucking abomination.

    The really sad thing is that it's literally in EVERYTHING. It's fucking ridiculous.

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  11. Sweden, let us not forget, produces a lot of great heavy metal, too.

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  12. Maybe that' just a whizzinator filled with corn starch and sugar water!

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  13. Oh come on you faggots, seriously ?
    Read this:
    http://www.clinsci.org/cs/100/0613/cs1000613.htm "Effect of a phytoestrogen food supplement on reproductive health in normal males"
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224 "al studies show no effects of soy protein or isoflavones on reproductive hormones in men: results of a meta-analysis."
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106 "Soybean isoflavone exposure does not have feminizing effects on men: a critical examination of the clinical evidence."

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  14. The one study that showed a decrease in testosterone had a male with 200% test as part of the starting 13 males in the study group.

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KFY/is_9_25/ai_n27410483/

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  15. I'm paying attention to ONE thing on this blog entry: Sarah Bäckman.
    If a damn protien shake with soy is going to hurt me that much, I'm doomed anyway.
    Long live Swedish blondes!

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  16. take sunflower lecithin if you want bigger loads

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  17. Tuplad- That's the amount that'd be found in 1.5 oz of soybeans, roughly, as there's approximately .5mg isoflavones per gram of soybeans. That's an insanely low dose of isoflavones to test. Additionally, that survey merely concluded that "the phytoestrogen dose consumed had no effect on semen quality", not that it had no effect on serum test levels. As to your meta-analysis, I'll have plenty of citations to counter that claim in the next installment. I don't know what that Catholic school's researchers were reading, but it certainly wasn't what I'm finding. Lastly, I never even mentioned semen quality- soy's bad for you for a wide variety of reasons. You gonna try to convince us that HFCS is good for us next?

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  18. Cigarettes are good for you.
    Smoke them while lifting.

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  19. That shit is scary, considering I had no control what my mom fed me back when I was a baby and I am pretty sure that soy milk may of been something se fed me. For those who were/are fed it, hopefully you can reverse the back effects over time. I am pretty sure you can just simply stop taking it and maybe supplement with some Tribulus or something and workout like a madman.???

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  20. Ori Hofmekler has a book called "The Anti-Estrogenic Diet," you guys should check up on.

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  21. You might be able to reverse the physical effects of growing up with a hormone imbalance but what if there are other psychological or emotional effects? Those are probably irreversible. Childhood is when certain aspects of your personality are permanently formed. If having a higher than normal amount of estrogen growing up affected your personality, you might be stuck that way forever or at the very least have a really hard time overcoming it.

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  22. ...above post from the expert on being fucked up as a child.

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  23. Guess it's a damn good thing that I inherited a pretty high amount of test from my parents. haha

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  24. Anonymous, I have more testosterone in my spit than your body even produces. Go read another book on overcoming your fear of rejection.

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  25. Mac has a point though.

    We have no control over our early childhood environments. There is no doubt in my mind that that has a profound impact on people.

    Recently I've been reading a lot of shit on neuroscience (most Ramachandran's stuff) and I'm beginning to wonder how even our mindsets can have an impact on our endocrine system (e.g. pseudocyesis). Could we possibly even think our way to higher levels of test?

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  26. I am pretty sure that everyone in here doesn't eat Mcdonald's anyways but, I read that they use soy burgers and use soy in there grease for frying their fries. I know what I am not eating on my cheat meals! haha

    Glen- Thanks, good to know. (if of course that is you. lol)

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  27. Thanks for the book suggesting P. Baker.

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  28. Jamie- What I'm trying to say here is that Soy isn't the devil people claim it to be. Just do some research on PubMed about Soy NOT lowering your testosterone. I also consume a bunch of Soy on a daily basis (I cant consume dairy products) and I feel fine, no stress, testosterone is high. I train 7 times a week and fuck just as much.

    Soy is alright to consume imo.

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  29. Well, there's a guy in the guiness book of world records who eats metal with no ill effects. Does that mean that eating a shopping cart, rather than the food in it, is okay?

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  30. If soy becomes the future meat just jump on some test and run low dose anti estrogen and you'll be good to go. Until then eat some meat and a little test too.

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  31. manveet- i've read similar stuff and for what it's worth,i definitly know that my mindset influences my endocrine system. if i think of myself as awesome, i feel like it. emotions and hormones are linked, so i can't feel fucking great without my test going up and cortisol going down, for example. the other way around is definitly possible, just look at any male with low t levels and his corresponding emotional status...

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  32. Tuplad-Most soy comes from Monsanto. Monsanto is evil and they are trying to dominate the world through control of the food supply. If that (along with the rest of the evidence listed here) doesn't seem like a good enough reason to avoid it...carry on. I'm sure they will genetically modify it more and more making it trick you into believe that the tits you are growing are normal.

    Yes, I'm wearing a tin foil hat.

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  33. I just watched the movie/documentary "Food, Inc." and it's fucked up. Monsanto is the worst part at the end...they have complete control over most of the food industry because people who were part of Monsanto are now part of our government. So they regulate EVERYTHING and even sue the poor farmers who work for them.

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  34. Yup, ever since they were allowed to patent a specific genetically altered seed they have basically been given carte blanche over the industry.

    Another good food documentary is FAT HEAD. The guy's voice can be annoying, but it's a good informative watch.

    SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!!

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  35. I just noticed there's soy lecithin in my ON Gold Standard...

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  36. You wouldn't believe it looking at him but I read recently that Derek Poundstone claims he gets the majority of his protein from Soy! Somehow I think he must be working for a Soy company.........
    http://forum.bodybuilding.com/archive/index.php/t-120446331.html

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  37. In no way is a claimed 15% the majority of his protein.

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  38. As I stated in a recent blog post, Derek's sponsored by Purina. He's paid to make those idiotic claims.

    Manveet- If the TM people can meditate DC into peace, we can think ourselves into high test. I'm on board.

    Tuplad- I can post findings in clinical studies that show secondhand smoke does not cause cancer. That's not to say, however, that it doesn't. If soy were the magical healthfood people claim it is, Americans would be able to fly and would be impervious to cancer and bullets.

    Justin_PS- Aristotle would be proud.

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