Replies

First, it is my understanding that there is little red meat in the Okinawans diet, so perhaps that contributes to their relative cancer rates.

Or, maybe it's the high quantity of soy they consume. There is certainly a great deal of research showing that soy is effective at preventing cancer.

Endocrine disruptors are substances in food and the environment that affect the endocrine system

Sounds scary. Did you know that by your definition, chocolate, garlic, celery, coffee, grapefruit, tea, and cola are also endocrine disruptors since they have been shown to have antispermatogenic activity? As a matter of fact there are more than 300 plants, in 16 common families, that contain estrogens that may bind with receptors of humans or wildlife. Naturally occurring estrogens are rife in many cereals, legumes, fruits, and tubers. Our world is full of endocrine disrupters and we eat some of them every day in natural foods. Nature didn't design all these foods to be harmful to humans. This fear is irrational and is being fanned by people who don't understand human physiology. They abuse science to create alarm.

As I've said many times on this thread, saying that isoflavones are similar to estrogens is ridiculous. Isloflavones are tissue selective and can have estrogen-like effects in some tissue but either no effects or antiestrogenic effects in other tissues. They can attach to receptors but I have never seen any research that proves this is deleterious to human in any way. In fact, the research proves just the opposite is true.

I am most familiar with, the overuse of soy phytoestrogen surpressed the production and utilization of the thyroid hormone T3, resulting in a number of medical problems.

How do you define the overuse of soy? Are you aware that the overconsumption of most foods can be bad for you? For T3 to be inhibited in any way by soy, you'd have to consume isoflavones in absurd quantities. Overfeeding an ingredient to produce the desired results is a proven method for obtaining additional grant money to study the issue further.

A diet rich in soy products has not been shown to be harmful to the thyroid in Japanese research. In some very rare cases, endocrinologists will eliminate soy and cruciferous vegetables from their patient's diets as a preventive measure but I have never seen where they require the patient to totally eliminate fermented soy. In these very rare cases however, doctors will recommend soy foods rather than soy supplements.

But now you're talking about extremely rare cases where people are already suffering from an unhealthy thyroid. There is no legitimate research proving that soy causes thyroid malfunctions in healthy people. This is akin to claiming that sugar is dangerous because it is deleterious to people with diabetes. There is also no proof that a diet high in soy foods is detrimental to thyroid patients.