- Joined
- Jul 2, 2007
- Messages
- 2,038
This may sound bizarre, but I just realized how passionate I am. I tend to start articles either proclaiming intense like or intense dislike for a person, a thing or, in many cases, a dietary ingredient. This passion has kept me on the edge as a big wave surfer and at odds with almost every company who has achieved top-10 status in the dietary supplement industry. The intensity under which I operate is so great that it actually caused attorneys from a popular supplement company to be waiting in the VPX booth within just nine hours of distributing the last issue of Human Muscle and Performance magazine. The intense lashing occurred because I exposed a $5 million myostatin supplement scam involving four to five major nutrition companies.
Tonight's no different. Because tonight I hate soy! Actually, I've hated soy for a very long time . . . about seven years to be precise. At that time, I was trying to really increase my protein intake while also trying to avoid eating too much red meat (I've since changed my heretical ways!) so I was eating a lot of tofu and soy proteins.
Luckily this very smart coworker of mine, a guy by the name of Adam Gissen (who looks about as much like a bodybuilder as Margaret Thatcher looks like a super-model) made an offhand comment about the fact that eating soy lowered testosterone levels. I was shocked, scared, and at the same time very curious. What was it about soy that was so problematic?
I decided to crack the books to see if Mr. Gissen was right. What I found out was not only surprising but alarming. Soy, far from being the wonder food that the USDA proclaims it to be, has a huge number of profoundly unhealthy effects, particularly if you're male and interested in gaining muscle.
That's because in addition to living up to Adam's claim that it lowers testosterone, soy also breaks down existing muscle, can contribute to the development of certain cancers, retards the sexual development of fetuses, and contributes to the possibility of thyroid problems.
Worse, because of the fact that Archer Daniels Midland (one of the world's largest food and grain processing companies) is one of the megaliths responsible for global soy production, a huge amount of money goes into marketing a vast array of soy-based products that are at best an inferior source of protein and at worst a cancer-causing, fetus-damaging, muscle-destroying menace to human health.
The Facts on Soy's Negative Effects
A number of the constituents within soy, particularly the phytoestrogens (estrogens found in plants) genestein and daidzein, act as powerful estrogens, binding to estrogen receptors and initiating the same kind of cellular responses as estrogen does. In other words, if you are trying to put on muscle, soy is probably the worst possible protein source you can intake.
Beyond hampering muscle growth, the phytoestrogens in soy have also been found to exert similar feminizing effects (including increased body fat, breast development, and BPH) as endogenous (naturally occurring in the body) estrogens. It's also been shown that when infants are exposed to the higher levels of phytoestrogens associated with diets including formulas that contain soy, they have significantly smaller testes postpuberty, as well as reduced testosterone and lower sperm counts.
Mouse fetuses exposed to higher than normal levels of estrogens, including phytoestrogens, displayed major health problems. In one case, mice treated neonatally with genestein demonstrated an increase of 35 percent in one form of uterine cancer!
In animals fed diets containing the equivalent of a human consuming a moderate amount of soy as part of a normal diet, serum testosterone levels as well as serum androstenedione levels were decreased. One must wonder if by pushing soy and simultaneously trying to pass legislation that would make andro illegal, our government is purposely trying to turn us all into what Arnold Schwarzenegger feared most - girly men! Another study, this one on humans, found a direct inverse correlation between the amount of soy consumed and serum testosterone levels. In other words, my associate Adam was right: the more soy you eat, the lower your testosterone levels will become.
Beyond this, additional animal studies have found that diets containing large amounts of soy cause an increase in postfeeding plasma cortisol levels. As you doubtless know, cortisol contributes to muscle tissue breakdown and is secreted by the body when under stress. This likely occurs because soy does not contain all the amino acids necessary for the body to initiate de novo protein synthesis. As a result, the body secretes cortisol to help it break down muscle and liberate the additional required amino acids. Obviously, if you're trying to build muscle this is exactly the opposite result you would want to encourage.
So, What to Do about Soy
In my opinion, and I think this is well supported by the research, soy isn't a good choice for anyone, with very few exceptions. It is a particularly bad choice for athletes, juveniles, pregnant women, nursing women, infants, and couples trying to conceive. In general, males should not consume any more soy than the occasional plate of edamame, a few chunks of tofu, or a bowl of miso soup. If you're getting more than that, you should probably reconsider your diet.
In fact, at this time, I think we need to see quite a bit more research proving that any amount of soy consumption is safe. It seems to me that soy needs to be examined critically over a fairly long period to discern just how dangerous it might really be. And that's just natural soy. I haven't even delved into the topic of genetically modified (GMO) soy, which in addition to having all the problems of soy may also have a host of problems all its own.
My advice: Avoid soy like the plague. Sure, it's cheap and some companies have brought out fairly good-tasting products, such as the new Detour Bar and Perfect Soy Pizza, but unless you want to save money by keeping yourself sick and puny, I'd steer clear of anything that even resembles soy, regardless of how much money you can save or how good it tastes. Stick to soy-free food and supplements like Micellean and Zero Carb Proteins. Your balls, your brawn, and your future children will all thank me.
-----------------------------
http://www.vpxsports.com/newweb/new...l_test.asp?id=3
Tonight's no different. Because tonight I hate soy! Actually, I've hated soy for a very long time . . . about seven years to be precise. At that time, I was trying to really increase my protein intake while also trying to avoid eating too much red meat (I've since changed my heretical ways!) so I was eating a lot of tofu and soy proteins.
Luckily this very smart coworker of mine, a guy by the name of Adam Gissen (who looks about as much like a bodybuilder as Margaret Thatcher looks like a super-model) made an offhand comment about the fact that eating soy lowered testosterone levels. I was shocked, scared, and at the same time very curious. What was it about soy that was so problematic?
I decided to crack the books to see if Mr. Gissen was right. What I found out was not only surprising but alarming. Soy, far from being the wonder food that the USDA proclaims it to be, has a huge number of profoundly unhealthy effects, particularly if you're male and interested in gaining muscle.
That's because in addition to living up to Adam's claim that it lowers testosterone, soy also breaks down existing muscle, can contribute to the development of certain cancers, retards the sexual development of fetuses, and contributes to the possibility of thyroid problems.
Worse, because of the fact that Archer Daniels Midland (one of the world's largest food and grain processing companies) is one of the megaliths responsible for global soy production, a huge amount of money goes into marketing a vast array of soy-based products that are at best an inferior source of protein and at worst a cancer-causing, fetus-damaging, muscle-destroying menace to human health.
The Facts on Soy's Negative Effects
A number of the constituents within soy, particularly the phytoestrogens (estrogens found in plants) genestein and daidzein, act as powerful estrogens, binding to estrogen receptors and initiating the same kind of cellular responses as estrogen does. In other words, if you are trying to put on muscle, soy is probably the worst possible protein source you can intake.
Beyond hampering muscle growth, the phytoestrogens in soy have also been found to exert similar feminizing effects (including increased body fat, breast development, and BPH) as endogenous (naturally occurring in the body) estrogens. It's also been shown that when infants are exposed to the higher levels of phytoestrogens associated with diets including formulas that contain soy, they have significantly smaller testes postpuberty, as well as reduced testosterone and lower sperm counts.
Mouse fetuses exposed to higher than normal levels of estrogens, including phytoestrogens, displayed major health problems. In one case, mice treated neonatally with genestein demonstrated an increase of 35 percent in one form of uterine cancer!
In animals fed diets containing the equivalent of a human consuming a moderate amount of soy as part of a normal diet, serum testosterone levels as well as serum androstenedione levels were decreased. One must wonder if by pushing soy and simultaneously trying to pass legislation that would make andro illegal, our government is purposely trying to turn us all into what Arnold Schwarzenegger feared most - girly men! Another study, this one on humans, found a direct inverse correlation between the amount of soy consumed and serum testosterone levels. In other words, my associate Adam was right: the more soy you eat, the lower your testosterone levels will become.
Beyond this, additional animal studies have found that diets containing large amounts of soy cause an increase in postfeeding plasma cortisol levels. As you doubtless know, cortisol contributes to muscle tissue breakdown and is secreted by the body when under stress. This likely occurs because soy does not contain all the amino acids necessary for the body to initiate de novo protein synthesis. As a result, the body secretes cortisol to help it break down muscle and liberate the additional required amino acids. Obviously, if you're trying to build muscle this is exactly the opposite result you would want to encourage.
So, What to Do about Soy
In my opinion, and I think this is well supported by the research, soy isn't a good choice for anyone, with very few exceptions. It is a particularly bad choice for athletes, juveniles, pregnant women, nursing women, infants, and couples trying to conceive. In general, males should not consume any more soy than the occasional plate of edamame, a few chunks of tofu, or a bowl of miso soup. If you're getting more than that, you should probably reconsider your diet.
In fact, at this time, I think we need to see quite a bit more research proving that any amount of soy consumption is safe. It seems to me that soy needs to be examined critically over a fairly long period to discern just how dangerous it might really be. And that's just natural soy. I haven't even delved into the topic of genetically modified (GMO) soy, which in addition to having all the problems of soy may also have a host of problems all its own.
My advice: Avoid soy like the plague. Sure, it's cheap and some companies have brought out fairly good-tasting products, such as the new Detour Bar and Perfect Soy Pizza, but unless you want to save money by keeping yourself sick and puny, I'd steer clear of anything that even resembles soy, regardless of how much money you can save or how good it tastes. Stick to soy-free food and supplements like Micellean and Zero Carb Proteins. Your balls, your brawn, and your future children will all thank me.
-----------------------------
http://www.vpxsports.com/newweb/new...l_test.asp?id=3
