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The first reports of a steep drop in the age of puberty began to emerge from the U.S. just over a decade ago - around the time my son Tony was born - but I didn't take too much notice back then. If it was a real problem, I reasoned, I would know someone with a child in this situation and back then I did not. As with so many other health stories, sceptical scientists quickly stepped in to criticise the methods used in the American studies, while others blamed the lifestyle there - too much obesity, too much sitting...

Do you know that the most medicinal soy food is miso? MEENA SREENIVASAN finds out more NOT many of us know of the goodness of “miso”. Current scientific research supports its historical health claims, and this delicious food is undoubtedly an effective therapeutic aid in the prevention and treatment of heart disease, certain cancers, radiation sickness and hypertension. According to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, miso soup consumption is also linked with up to a 50 per cent reduced risk of breast cancer. As it is fermented with a B12 synthesising bacteria, it has been commonly recommended as...

Once Thought Of As Superfood That Helped Prevent The Disease Is Now Thought Of As Helping Increase The Risk After 10 years of being touted as "the" superfood, soy-based products are all over the supermarket. But now new reports link soy to breast cancer. ... But several new studies suggest that eating a lot of soy -- in particular highly processed soy -- and soy supplements may actually promote the growth of some pre-existing breast cancers, especially in post-menopausal women. "A higher dose of soy, such as you might see in a diet with supplements, will cause the breast cells...

Virtually all "protein bars" on the market today are made with soy protein. Many infant formula products are also made with soy protein, and thousands of vegetarian products (veggie burgers, veggie cheese, "natural" food bars, etc.) are made with soy protein. That soy protein is almost always described as safe and "natural" by the companies using it. But there's a dirty little secret the soy product industry doesn't want you to know: Much of the "natural" soy protein used in foods today is bathed in a toxic, explosive chemical solvent known as hexane.To determine the true extent of this hexane...

Aian-American women who consumed high amounts of soy during childhood appear to have reduced their risk for breast cancer, a U.S. National Cancer Institute study has found. "Historically, breast cancer incidence rates have been four to seven times higher among white women in the U.S. than in women in China or Japan," Regina Ziegler, a senior investigator in the cancer epidemiology and genetics division at the cancer institute, said in an agency news release. "However, when Asian women migrate to the U.S., their breast cancer risk rises over several generations and reaches that of U.S. white women, suggesting that modifiable...

There's more that one way to green a car, and many of the most interesting technological advancements don't involve powering an internal combustion engine. Consider that much of the fabric, plastic and rubber that goes into a car's construction is derived from petroleum, and you see why alternatives are becoming increasingly attractive. Automakers have taken up corn-based plastics and soy-based seat foam, and now the latest greenery comes by way of defatted soy flour. The latter is an organic substance that's being considered as a replacement for the petroleum-based "carbon black" rubber particles that are currently specified in the vast...

President-elect Barack Obama is being asked to intervene in the state he represented in the U.S. Senate to halt a prison "feeding program" that is causing health problems for inmates, according to a nutrition organization. In an open letter to Obama, Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, said the existing procedures are "poisoning" inmates.Obama, Morell wrote, should "focus on a grave injustice taking place in the prisons of your home state, namely, a prison diet that is slowly killing the inmates assigned to the Illinois Department of Corrections."This is a diet based largely on soy protein...

A study recently published in Human Reproduction demonstrated that intake of soy foods significantly reduces sperm counts in men. The study is especially significant because it is the largest study in humans to examine the relationship between semen quality and phytoestrogens (plant compounds that can mimic the physiological effects of the endogenous hormone, estrogen). Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues found that men who ate the most soy food had 41 million sperm per milliliter less than men who did not consume soy products. The normal sperm concentrations for men ranges between 80...

Eating a half serving a day of soy-based foods could be enough to significantly lower a man's sperm count, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The study is the largest in humans to look at the relationship between semen quality and a plant form of the female sex hormone estrogen known as phytoestrogen, which is plentiful in soy-rich foods. "What we found was men that consume the highest amounts of soy foods in this study had a lower sperm concentration compared to those who did not consume soy foods," said Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in...

Corn hits record, soy rallies as floods expand By Julie Ingwersen and Nigel Hunt Thu Jun 12, 1:39 PM ET Corn prices soared to record highs on Thursday as flooding damaged crop prospects in the U.S. Midwest, heightening concern over shrinking stocks and fueling the market's relentless advance. Torrential rains have swept across the Midwest, the key growing region in the world's top producer, resulting in floods which have destroyed homes, as well as thousands of acres of corn and soybeans. "It's the worst in recent memory, at a time when demand has never been higher," said Gavin Maguire, analyst...

...........After years of consuming various forms of soy nearly every day, I felt reasonably fit, but somewhere along the line I'd stopped menstruating. I couldn't figure out why my stomach became so upset after I ate edamame or why I was often moody and bloated. It didn't occur to me at the time to question soy, heart protector and miracle food.

ATLANTA (AP) - A vegan couple were sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for the death of their malnourished 6-week-old baby boy, who was fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice.

Scientists at a state animal health laboratory confirmed Monday that a popular brand of pet food submitted for testing by Marin veterinarians was indeed contaminated, even though it is not on a growing list of recalled pet foods. At the request of the Mill Valley Pet Clinic, three varieties of Nutro Max Cat Gourmet Classics, in 3-ounce cans, were tested by the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Here’s a prediction: Five years from now we will look back and say that 2007 was a watershed year for Arkansas’ economy and its environment. And we’ll be able to sum up the reason in one word: biodiesel. As I hope to make clear in a moment, a few key policy decisions now will let Arkansas play to our strengths and become a national leader in biodiesel and other biofuels. And every part of the state’s economy will benefit as a result. Biodiesel is the term for fuel made from renewable feedstocks such as soybean oil, cottonseed oil, even chicken...

Last week's column ("Soy is making kids 'gay'") got a lot of attention – 500 e-mails and three dozen media interview requests – because it blindsided the overwhelming majority of readers. Perhaps fewer than 10 percent of us are aware that soybeans are a hotly debated topic in medical circles today. Soy products – eaten, drunk, and slipped into thousands of commercial products – are rightly being blamed for a horrendous variety of medical conditions, several of them nearing epidemic status and a few of them irreversible. Pediatricians and other doctors are starting to see a growing parade of patients...

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular. Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food. The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore. I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of...

A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals Posted: December 12, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular. Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food. The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them...

Washington, D.C., November 27, 2006 – Having successfully turned pieces of giant soybean stalks into charcoal briquettes, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) chemical engineer Justin Barone now believes they would make good fiberboard and other wood-substitute products as well. ARS geneticist Thomas E. Devine took the plants to Barone after noticing they had a rare ability to stand up straight all season, despite their unusual height of up to 7 feet. Soybean plants often lodge—fall down—as they grow taller. Barone is with the ARS Environmental Management and Byproduct Utilization Laboratory, and Devine is with the ARS Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, both...

Abstract Recent reports of problem foods in Mainland China have raised global concerns about the safety of Chinese food products. Drawing on reliable data extracted from Chinese newspapers, magazines and the Internet, this report, the second in the series, takes a closer look at the hair-made soy sauce, a common kitchen-accessory for marinating and seasoning foods. It seeks to inform the scientific and medical communities regarding the potential short- and long-term epidemic consequences of consuming such soy sauce

When discussing economic policies it is important to not let rhetoric overpower reality. That happened in a recent, much-reprinted New York Times article that argued "endless fields of corn in the Midwest can be distilled into endless gallons of ethanol … that could end any worldwide oil shortage … and free the United States from dependence on foreign energy." The story went on to discuss how much energy goes into producing ethanol. But it failed to substantiate its lead assertion of "endless gallons of ethanol" that might "free the United States" from oil imports. The United States is an agricultural...