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Originally Posted by liamona  Personally, I gain a lot of weight when I eat unfermented crappy soy products like certain soy milk brands and fake soy meats. |
Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but I still am not convinced.
I can give anecdotal evidence, too. I've been vegetarian for over 15 years. I've gone through phases where I ate alot of soy and I've gone through periods where I ate little to none. My weight changed in response to my calorie intake, age, activity level, hormones, and health issues... but never in response to how much soy I ate. I have my thryoid checked regularly as part of an in-depth physical my doctor gives me, and it's never come back with any unusual findings, which logically should not happen if I eat so much soy.
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I don't think Asians have historically eaten that much soy, and they only did so in order to supplement meat (or for the poor, to replace meat when it wasn't available).
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You assume people don't eat meat because they can't afford it. I don't have the SAD-diet perspective, so I don't see it that way. I believe many Asians just didn't see the need to have a big hunk of meat at every meal and didn't see soy as being horrible.
Here is my overall frustration with the soy topic:
In my readings, I come across health articles that discuss the pros and cons of soy. However, some articles are totally anti-soy and claim soy has no redeeming qualities -- yet these seem to be the articles that never cite scientific sources. They're all just summaries or reprints of someone else's anti-soy opinion or excerpt of a book someone is trying to peddle. And then I hear scare-tactic claims such as "soy makes men into women", "soy causes the thyroid to malfunction", and "soy is the reason all Americans are so fat"... and admittedly at that point I put on my Skeptic's Hat.
The anti-soy articles sometimes make such sweeping generalizations. Most of them don't address that 90% of American soy is now GM, so it's not clear which soy they're looking at. These articles rarely address the changes in soy that occur in the different processing steps to make the different soy products. They aren't addressing that simply cooking soy can change its properties. They aren't comparing green soy (eg. Edamame) with dried, processed, and stored soy beans. So how can we say "all soy is evil" when not all soy is the same?
And if soy is so bad for mammal, shouldn't the livestock be sick, if soy is so detrimental? It seems like those most upset about soy seem to be saying "go back to milk and meat instead of that yucky soy." But if soy is toxic, why isn't anyone worried about meat built from it? It seems inconsistent to say we can't eat soy but animals can and there's absolutely no problem with eating soy-fed meat or dairy.
Here is one article I found interesting, which weighs in on the pros and cons of eating soy:
TMUSCLE.com | Soy: What's the Big Deal?
Author's closing statement:
"In the end, as we have often have discussed, there's a simple rule of thumb that most people somehow forget... repeatedly. And it's this: You don't often go wrong with whole, unprocessed foods. Where the problems typically occur is with processed food, in all forms.
This rule of thumb is also true with soy.
Whole, unprocessed soy is just a food. It's not a political agenda. It's not a public health crisis. It's not a way of life. It's not a medicine. And it's not a panacea.
It's one food. One of a few thousand foods people can include in their diets. It's nothing more.
So, as the title of this article hints at, we want people to re-freakin-lax when it comes to soy. Moderate doses of whole-food soy proteins really are no big deal."