Re: Disadvantages & Advantages of Soy

October 15, 2003

> Soy

> The Miracle Food or Pandora's Box?

> Compiled by: Health Action Network Society

> ....Phytic acid from SPI (soy protein isolate) blocks

> the absorption of essential minerals and creates

> deficiency symptoms of calcium, magnesium, magnesium,

> copper, molybdenum, iron.....

This is largely true, but 1 of the phytic acids in soy (IP6) is actually used to

treat cancer and is substantially effective. One of its mechanisms may be

blocking the absorption of iron (and perhaps other minerals such as copper) that

promote cancer growth. The antisoy writers never mention that. Similarly, some

of the other allegedly terrible ingredients in soy (e.g., the isoflavone

daidzein) also have strong cancer-healing (and other therapeutic) properties.

I agree that soy, particularly if nonfermented, has many problems, which were

well articulated in this article. I don't recommend nonfermented soy to anyone

(though I think a little tofu is ok for some people), and some people tend do

poorly w/any soy. However, fermented soy (e.g., tempeh and particularly

fermented soy beverages) have powerful healing properties, and hundreds of

people w/cancer, including very advanced cancer (including estrogen+ breast

cancer), have recovered following their consumption of large amounts of

high-quality fermented soy beverages.

> Soybeans contain potent enzyme inhibitors that block

> the action of trypsin...

This (like MOST of the negative things listed in this article) is true of

NONfermented soy and is the reason that it's essential to avoid nonfermented soy

if one is taking pancreatic/proteolytic enzymes to treat cancer.

I find it sad that so many of the articles on soy present only one side and try

to make it out either as a poison that's detrimental to everyone and has no

redeeming qualities OR a perfectly safe miracle food that's the cure-all for

everything.

Leonard

October 15, 2003

I studied nutrition from various perspectives for a long time before

being forced to apply what I've learned to a cancer situation in the

family, and one thing I've eventually become convinced of is that

whenever we're dealing with a controversial food item, method of

preparation, or a whole food group being hailed to the high holies by

one school of nutritional thought and condemned to hell by another,

the solution lies in one basic rule to follow:

use traditional foods, traditionally prepared, in traditional amounts

and combinations, exactly the way they were used for the longest time

by cultures that have thrived on them for the longest time.

Soy is a good example of how and why I would resort to this approach.

Soy would, e.g., suppress the thyroid according to its " scientific "

profile (i.e. based on what it " contains, " what those constituents do

in vitro, and assuming that in vivo it's eaten all by itself and any

which way) -- yet it doesn't do that in cultures that use it

traditionally, because it is ALWAYS combined with seaweeds in all

traditional soy-containing meals. Seaweed is high in iodine and

generally supportive of the thyroid function. Another thing about soy

its opponents hold against it: lectins. ALL beans are very high in

lectins (hemagglutinin mentioned in the article is, by the way, not a

soy lectin, it's a kidney bean lectin...) -- all foods have lectins

and all of them agglutinate something or other, all beans have more,

generally speaking, than most foods, soy doesn't have more than most

beans... the article asserts they are not inactivated by cooking --

well, NONE of the lectins in any of the beans are inactivated by

cooking, but ALL are inactivated by pre-soaking for a few hours

(overnight, in any typical traditional recipe for any beans) --

besides, the ability of lectins to agglutinate certain substances can

be used against cancer, because some of them selectively agglutinate

cancer cells, some specifically go for cancer cells of specific

types... so, again, a traditional culinary way to use a bean would be

to pre-soak it and then cook it, but a traditional MEDICINAL use for

the same bean would be to eat it raw, lectins and all (kidney beans,

e.g., are used this way as an anti-cancer remedy; fava beans, against

Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and so on).

Fermented soy dishes, a staple of cuisines that yield

much-lower-than-ours cancer rates in populations that consume them,

are never subjected to overheating (e.g., you never boil your miso

soup!) -- they have enzymes to offer and you have to handle them

accordingly to get the benefits. Problems arise when, e.g., a

culturally non-vegetarian person adopts a vegetarian diet and starts

eating soy as a substitute for meat, in amounts and combinations and

via preparation methods that are not based on thousands of years of

GMP ( " good munching practice " ) -- a slab of tofu as thick as the steak

the new diet is supposed to improve upon?.. a veggieburger?.. with

your every cell probably crying " where's the beef? " while getting

something it doesn't know how to make any enzymatic, mineral,

synergistic sense out of?..

So, well, I'll put a tiny amount of tofu to swim in a miso soup (which

I will take extra care not to bring to a boil), alongside its fellow

wakame or dulce or kelp synergists... but a veggieburger...

please... I've no idea what it's gonna do to me and I don't think I

want to have to find out!

For anticancer foods, I think it's a good idea to take a close look at

what people ate way back when, when cancer rates were low, and try to

do what they did, the way they did it. All of our " new improved "

foods are players in what's happening to our health, and besides the

ones we think of as " healthy " or " unhealthy " there's another category:

the " it depends " foods. Whether a food item is healthy or not depends

on what you do with it...

Elena

October 15, 2003

[ ] Re: Disadvantages & Advantages of Soy

>... the solution lies in one basic rule to follow:

>

> use traditional foods, traditionally prepared, in traditional amounts

> and combinations, exactly the way they were used for the longest time

> by cultures that have thrived on them for the longest time. ....

Elena,

You have such good common sense. Another basic dietary rule is:

Whatever diet a cancer patient was on prior to diagnosis was not a

cancer-killing diet, no matter how wonderful it may have seemed. For

example, I have seen a number of ovarian cancer patients who had been strict

vegetarians for years -- Hindus from India, vegans from Hawaii, Seventh Day

Adventists from California. Most such people have strong reasons to avoid

taking up meat and I respect that. Instead the nutritional component of

their treatment must match the strategy of the medicinal component and at

the same time be quite different from what they are used to, but nonetheless

doable. Options can include a Breuss six-week diet or a Moerman citrus

diet. Many people lose too much weight on a strict macrobiotic diet. I

have seen ovarians cancers grow on a strict macrobiotic diet and on a strict

Hallelujah diet. I have seen ovarian cancer with several people who had

eaten only organic for years and never eat sugar. On the other hand I have

seen people defy patterns and get well while violating every health

guideline known to man.

There is only one cancer dogma that I can truly respect: Never get

dogmatic about any cancer theory or cancer diet. For any practitioner, when

dogma and beliefs replace careful observation, careful questioning, and

careful thought, success rates start to drop.

October 15, 2003