Soy Boy

I went a walkin’ yesterday with a good friend and, as it was a long one, we just about covered every topic going, under the hot sun.  We’re both converts of the high fat & low carb eating regime, when up popped discussion of a dietary inhibitor.  That inhibitor being soy beans and their ‘under the radar’ lectins.  It seems lectins are highly concentrated plant proteins found in many legumes – soy cleverly uses them to protect against their natural predators.  Fermented or sprouted soy is good for us – but unfermented soy in the quantities currently eaten, is leading to: gut and goiter issues, amongst other harms.  Soy blocks nutrient absorption by interfering with proper food digestion.  It has been linked to cognitive decline, immune system dysfunction and cancers.  Since the 1990’s, GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) soy, makes up 90% of US grown soy and is also evidenced as causing: low birth weight babies, infertility and weight gain.  Scary, and yet another ingredient to add to the list of foodstuffs that ‘might just kill you’.  A bit like life – all this will end in death, so let’s dig deeper to see if we should fully sling the soy, boy…

Different Milk To Dairy – Old Bean

Soy are legumes, a type of bean and like many a good Asian product they originated in the Far East.  Another one of Asia’s best products, of course, being the Honda motorbike.  But what if soy is, actually less fun and more dangerous – over time than some of Honda’s finest?  What if soy, is actually taking us for a bit of a ride, too?  What about soy milk, I hear you ask – that staple of the new generation of Veganistas everywhere?  Apparently it’s made by soaking and grinding soy beans, boiling the mixture and filtering out the remaining particles.  Milk, there you have it, nowadays.  With soy milk being ‘non animal’ many see it as a non dairy milk alternative – though we’d need to cut the grass more often, instead of relying on Mrs Moo.  But ‘GMO soy’ is absent in the listed soy milk ingredients, too scary, it’s kept strictly ‘off label’.  Perhaps modern soy should be listed, but as a ‘nutty’ ingredient.

Messing With The Minerals

Soy, it seems, messes with your leptin receptors, those hunger regulators – the software of the ‘I’ve had enough thanks’ on the gut brain superhighway.  (I thought that was ghrelin, but there you go – another pub quiz tie-breaker that I’ll lose).  Not just lectin, it seems soy has high levels of phytates which bind to minerals including: iron, zinc, calcium and magnesium.  All those essential minerals that I, as a walker, like in the right place in my body to ensure my bones don’t snap and calf muscles don’t go twang – just as I lace up my trainers.

Here’s Comes The Cavalry, John Boy

When marketing gets involved, the trumpet players will extol the latest ‘must have’ super food – riding to our rescue over the horizon along with John Wayne.  But what if soy is actually, a bit: Big Hat No Cattle.  What if the cavalry was riding not so much a horse, as a lame duck – using any old excuse to get soy into the SAD (Standard American Diet) but it being fully denatured from the more healthy Asian variety?  Just saying, John.

Moob Away From The Soy, Boy

Soy contains isoflavones, raising your oestrogen levels while competing with, and lowering, your body’s testosterone.  Over time (multiple meal times that is) increased ingestion of adulterated soy sees your energy and libido decline, while gynecomastia increases.  I might have boobed with that last one guys – but I really don’t think so.  What if we’re a bit asleep at the dietary wheel – what if soy is more: stupor food, than super food?  Soy snuck onto the ‘staples list’ a couple of decades ago, but what if the US version, now regularly crossing the Pond, is genetically modifying, us too.  Tested in the lab for weeks, yet there is now decades long evidence showing up on hips, bellies and breasts everywhere…

Finally, we have to ask: when is a toy boy not a toy boy – when it’s a: soy, boy.  It’s an adolescent physical change we increasingly need to keep abreast of, sadly.  One with moobs that needs an honest and open debate.