I've been a vegetarian for 4 years and stopped about a year ago. This sounds great, but it still consists of soy protein, which is not good for men due to estrogen.
There are many medical articles published on peer reviewed journals to counter this myth, it has no basis in reality, and has never been proved. One of those xenophobic-anti-Asian myths from the 60s (similar to the one about MSG).
If you can't find them yourself (the Wikipedia entry is a good start), let me know and I'll provide citations.
Papers and studies sponsored by the soy industry to debunk "myths" published from reputable centers aren't really that great even if someone updated a wikipedia entry to reference one of them.
It seems like a knee-jerk reaction to believe that all those papers are sponsored by the soy industry and everything saying that soy does have estrogen is coming from a reputable source.
There is very, very little evidence that soy products are harmful to men because of phytoestrogens. The evidence is basically this:
1. Phytoestrogens found in soy are chemically related to human estrogen
2. Phytoestrogens are readily absorbed by humans when consumed
So it was a reasonable hypothesis that soy might be harmful to men due to phytoestrogens. This hypothesis has been tested, and falsified, by numerous studies.
> The results of this meta-analysis suggest that neither soy foods nor isoflavone supplements alter measures of bioavailable T concentrations in men.
I would have to read the rest to find out how much soy protein or isoflavones was given, for how long, in addition to what the diets were, but from the above, that does not debunk anything... All it states is that in this particular expirement, they don't think it causes lowered T levels. This is a world away from saying that soy isoflavones don't have estrogen-like effects, nor interact or effect estrogen receptors, nor have a negative effect on the brain.
And I can't even imagine why they did not check estrogen levels.
>All it states is that in this particular expirement,
That sounds like you didn't actually read the abstract. It wasn't a "particular experiment". It was forty-seven experiments.
>they don't think it causes lowered T levels.
... or SBHG levels, or FAI.
>This is a world away from saying that soy isoflavones don't have estrogen-like effects, nor interact or effect estrogen receptors, nor have a negative effect on the brain.
Well, no, it's not a world away from that, because one of the major effects of estrogen on men is to affect androgen levels, so if these isoflavones don't do that, then it is unlikely that they are affecting the body the same way that estrogen does. It doesn't rule out the possibility that soy isoflavones affect the human body, but it puts a huge hole in the entire basis for thinking that they might.
> Well, no, it's not a world away from that, because one of the major effects of estrogen on men is to affect androgen levels
You can't say 'ohh it doesn't seem to decrease T levels, so it must not be estrogenic!' It could still product other estrogen like effects.
> but it puts a huge hole in the entire basis for thinking that they might
How so? There are so many other ways for the isoflavones to affect the body besides lowering T levels.
We already know that there are a number of people reporting feminization, health, and gastro symptoms from consuming unfermented soy products. That's hard to ignore. Something is going on.
I was a vegetarian for 9 years (vegan for 4). My personal, anecdotal and completely unscientific experience: when i switched from soy protein shakes to whey protein shakes, I immediately noticed an improvement in recovery times, not to mention less gas.
Soy is not going to be a complete substitute for meat's nutritional components. Supplemented with lots of liquid aminos, etc? Probably will work well. But the worst part for me about a vegan diet is the difficulty in getting enough fat intake. Too little fat in the diet causes depression.
Do you have a good citation for "Too little fat in the diet causes depression"?
I did a quick search, and turned up a study in PLoS ONE[1] which found trans fatty acids correlate with increased depression, while there is a weak inverse relation to mono- and polyunsaturated fat intake. But a blog reviewing the study[2] points out some limitations. And some research mentioned at [3] apparently concluded there is a link between depression and DHA specifically, but if that's true it wouldn't affect only vegetarians: "Most people in the Western world do not get enough omega-3 fatty acids [such as DHA] in their diet."[4]
Your claim is new to me, and as someone on a low-fat vegan diet, if you have a more conclusive reference I'd be curious to see it.
In my early 20's, when I was still trying to land my first "office job" out of college, I was working construction. The work was physically demanding, and no matter how much I ate, I always felt hungry and sore. Tons of tofu, tempeh, beans, it didn't matter. My buddy brought over a ton of venison which I put in the freezer. I had enough for two months of meals. I started eating it every day, and within 48 hours I noticed a huge difference. My weight went up to 195 (i'm 6'2, and it had dropped to 175) which was a much healthier weight, and most importantly, my depression (which i really didn't know i had, went away)and i just felt better, more motivated, happier, you name it.
I'm sure many, many vegetarians live great, happy lives on their diet. I'm not one of them. Years of farting all the time from soy (beano didn't do it for me), never gaining muscle, not being able to socialize with my male buddies since 90% of the vegetarians i encountered were females..... the list goes on.
I assure you, it confused me to. But its a reality that people on restrictive diets forget: in our society, meals are a very fundamental element of socializing. My restrictive diet made it so that when I'd hang out with buddies, when they would pick a restaurant, I could rarely get proper nutrition from the meals. This would cause me not to eat almost anything at these places. They would notice, feel bad, and then feel guilty. I would always have to hunt around for a place to grab anything to fill me up before we continued our day.
"Results: Poor cognitive test performance, enlargement of ventricles and low brain weight were each significantly and independently associated with higher midlife tofu consumption."
"We hypothesize that regular dietary exposure to soy isoflavones over many years during middle life may be associated with the appearance of accelerated brain aging in later life attributable to chronically sub-optimal neural plasticity."
That's key right there, and it's all you'll ever get from a longitudinal study. You want to make strong claims about the effects of soy like "soy is a terrible idea", you're going to need a controlled trial, not a cohort study.
I would like to see a study like that controlled for cardiovascular exercise.
I am also concerned about the validity of the theory because of the trend stall in figure 2 at ages 80-89 and the stark reversal in the 90-93 age group, where high-high was at almost low-low levels.
It looks to me like there is a good chance of some unaccounted confounding variable, even beyond the possible effects of exercise (which would not explain the 90-93 group).
This study seems to be counteracted by millions of Asian people that are living well into their 80s, 90s, and 100s, and eat a diet that has quite a bit of unfermented (and fermented) soy in it.
Surely that depends on how much of that population falls on the "low" or "high" side of soy intake as measured by the study. I don't know how much of the Asian population falls into the intake levels this study claims might be negatively affected - do you?
Irrespective of the concerns about the soy, the wider question is the dietary profile after their processing.
Whey protein can be used to produce biodegradable packaging material. Doesn't mean I'd be automatically willing to replace my whey protein shakes with eating boxes. Not even if they taste nice.
Well, from the perspective of an omnivore, soy would be a huge improvement over chicken in the estrogen department. The hormones added to make chicken breasts plump up tend to result in fulfilling the prophecy "you are what you eat".
http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects
Not too reliable of a source, I know, but there's a bunch of reputable books that I've read back in the day on this subject that said the same thing.