TDG: The Billion-Dollar Myth: Soy

[engberson]

Man, Fat Guy is pushing me, hard.

... c'mon, now ...

1. The original piece was presented as an article of facts.

2. I expressed an opinion. I thought the piece sucked. It was poorly researched and poorly written.

3. Number two was probably a little harsh, but well, ya know.

4. Fat Guy asked whether or not readers thought the piece should have been published, remember? Sorry if I coughed up the wrong answer. I thought we were, you know, just talking.

5. The Bob Herbert analogy is misplaced. Bob Herbert writes op-ed pieces. A better comparison would be Gina Kolata.

6. Oh, I see slkinsey already broke that down.

7. off-topic -- fresco, I am still cracking up over "fresh frozen." Man, that's funny.

8. You did address it all already; thus my apologies for waking the dead, here. But no one came out and voted "NO" in your poll. I thought there should be at least one hash in that column.

9. I deep-fried chicken tonight, for the first time. It came out pretty good. Did the flour/egg/flour routine. But it's hard to make Foster Farms chicken taste like anything besides crap.

10. Then again, I cooked it in duck fat.

11. Mmm, duck fat.

[Pan]

8. You did address it all already; thus my apologies for waking the dead, here. But no one came out and voted "NO" in your poll.

Are you sure? I think several of us voted "no," including me. Please consider rereading the whole thread.

[Fat Guy]

The nice thing about being a dictator is that only my vote counts.

[Pan]

The nice thing about being a dictator is that only my vote counts.

[macrosan]

The nice thing about being a dictator is that only my vote counts.

And the nice thing about being a dictatee is that nobody knows whether or not I'm ignoring your vote

[engberson]

I think several of us voted "no," including me. Please consider rereading the whole thread.

Ok. I did. No one actually put the letters "N" and "O" together, so I originally thought a more emphatic response was warranted. I thought writers were being too kind, a little soft. For example, you wrote:

I question whether you should have published it.

... and that's about as decisive as it got. Then again, you also wrote:

Because [the] article was so harsh and purple, I was shocked to read it.

I apologize. By the way, Pan, thanks muchly for your contributions to this thread, which is a gem. It was fun reading it the first time, and it was fun reading it again.

[jhlurie]

The original piece was presented as an article of facts.

I think the bio details given about the author (and Fat Guy is in charge of those) make it quite clear that she is not objective. And its a myth of the late 20th century that reporters are supposed to be objective anyway. But as has been mentioned, Nina isn't a reporter. She's a commentator.

Nothing wrong with expressing a belief that the column was poor. Just the implication that eGullet made a mistake in publishing it. Obviously you are entitled to that belief as well, but its a lot easier to refute.

[Stone]

Bad Soy. Destroying the Amazon.

"It's clear that the soy boom is an important element of this in the southern Amazon and if ways are not found to minimize the impact of the inevitable spread of soy farming, it is difficult to see these figures falling in coming years," he said.

Edited June 26, 2003 by Stone (log)

[Nina Planck]

Lots of interesting discussion on soy since I was last here - thanks.

I hope to come back to some of these points later, but in the meantime, I would just note that my piece says that the modern industrial soy industry has invented foods only recently - or perfected their recent forms - and tried to tie them (and purported health benefits) to traditional foods which have been eaten for many thousands of years. These foods are not equivalents. That Asians might also: excercise more, practice holistic healing, eat lots of leafy greens, drink anti-oxidant tea - I'm just throwing other lifestyle factors out there, not making an epidemiological argument about morbidity rates in Asian v US populatios - has no relationship to whether the soy industry tries to convince you that the soy they sell is what ASians eat, and how they eat it.

The point is that drinking daily 100 g of isolated soy protein mixed with vegetable oil and maple syrup is not, as the ads suggest, going to save you from hot flashes or produce other miracle cures.

This doesn't mean that a slice of tofu will kill you. Far from it. I buy local tofu at the Union Square Greenmarket - the 'roasted' one is delicious sauteed in duck fat.

There are also fermented tofus - sofu, I think, is the name, but I don't have it to hand - which deal with the natural presence of phytates in soy - a well-established scientific fact - by rendering the phytates less harmful.

And just because I demonstrate a visible trail of financial self-interest, doesn't make the essay an anti-capitalist screed. I grew up in a for-profit food business and I founded another. NOthing wrong with capitalism that society (in its values, choices, free press, and other interventions) can't temper.

NP

[Citryphus]

I missed this thread the first time around, but since Nina Planck woke it up I thought I'd add my two cents:

Fat Guy stated that as the result of a Google search he determined that those who beleive MSG is harmless are in the minority. Unfortunately that rests on the assumption that both sides of the debate produce equal amounts of Google-cached output. Take any idea widely held to be false--astrology, UFOs, zero-point energy--and do a Google search. You will find many more believers than disbelievers.

The thread contained some misinformed opinons about science and how it works, but raised the fair point that not all things labeled science are of the same quality. In fact many of the the most popular and widely beleived "scientific" theories are unverifiable or wrong: Sagan's nuclear winter, Erlich's population boom and famine, etc. That does not mean the scientific method in general and the peer review process are not superior to all alternatives.

I found the debate about what form of editorial policy TDG should have interesting. And that is the crux, isn't it? The statement, "MSG -- a brain poison" is not supported by the article or by subsequent posts from Nina Planck. If TDG has editors they should have challenged this statement; that's the responsible thing to do. The other option is for TDG to disclaim responsibility for the opinions expressed.

The question is, does TDG have an ad-hoc or arbitrary editorial policy? If one wrote, "Howard Dean -- a known wife-beater," or "George W. Bush -- a known crackhead," without further substantiation, would that get published?

[gus_tatory]

i'm not wading into the brouhaha...

but i wonder about phytoestrogens in plant foods (and it's not just soy, they're in sweet potatoes, etc.)--are they really metabolized into sex hormones in the body?

and "MSG = brain poison"? surely if used in trace quantities (like 1/4-1/2 tsp. for an entire dish serving 4-6) it's safe, right?

i guess this just opens up more questions...

[Katherine]

i'm not wading into the brouhaha... 

but i wonder about phytoestrogens in plant foods (and it's not just soy, they're in sweet potatoes, etc.)--are they really metabolized into sex hormones in the body?

Phytoestrogens are found in yams, not sweet potatoes that are generally found in the US. And yes, I have heard that consumption of yams in Africa results in a higher natural twinning rate.

and "MSG = brain poison"? surely if used in trace quantities (like 1/4-1/2 tsp. for an entire dish serving 4-6) it's safe, right?

That MSG = "brain poison" is completely unsubstantiated.

i guess this just opens up more questions...

Actually, it's been argued to death already. 'nuf sed.

[AzRaeL]

*sigh* my ancestors have been eating soy products since time immemorial.

trust the greedy American industry to come in and mess that up in a few decades.