The lowly seer

Soya, miracle or nightmare?

Story

Seems like that miracle health-food of the 60s and staple of factory-fed animals contains such chemicals as omega-6 fatty acids (thought to be dangerous when out of proportion to omega-3), isoflavones (debatable as to whether a carcinogen or an anti-carcinogen), phytates and enzyme inhibitors. Perhaps the isoflavones (plant oestrogens) may have something to do with the increase in male infertility and testicular cancer in western Europe. Not mentioned in the article, upsurges in allergies have been found near ports where soya grain is unloaded in quantities.

In countries such as China and India, where it's been used for centuries, it's always fermented, as in soy sauce or miso, before use, which removes the nasties. Livestock won't touch the stuff; the feed, along with the extracts used in processed food, is the result of some heavyweight chemical engineering.

My opinion, at the moment case not proven either way, but I sincerely hope there's some research being done though. Urgently.

Huge swathes of the amazon rain forest have been cleared to grow it. Great, we suffer global warming, not to achieve any great goal, but so that the suburban housewife can drive her SUV down to the supermarket to pick up foodstuffs that may turn out to be greatly harmful?

posted by Les the Spaceman @ 11:02 am