Soy’s Estrogenic Effects

🖨️ Print post

An alert member recently sent us two stud­ies on soy—one from this year and one from 2004, which we had missed. Both reveal the estrogenic dangers of this toxic bean.

The 2021 paper comes from Japan, where a team of researchers administered soy isofla­vones—the estrogenic component of soy—to baby catfish and succeeded in making them 100 percent female. Researchers have been able to turn male catfish into females by administering female hormones, but this method is banned for fish for human consumption. Soy isoflavones have the same effect and apparently can be administered legally!

The fish farming industry prefers female catfish because they grow faster—to a weight of six hundred grams (about one and one-third pounds) in six to ten months after hatching. Males grow much more slowly.

Lead researcher Toshinao Ineno thinks using soy female hormones on fish destined for human consumption is a great idea. “By making them all female, production efficiency will rise. This can be applied to other farm-raised fish whose females are more valuable.” The team intends to work on making sturgeons—the fish that produce caviar—female using soybean isoflavone as well.¹

The 2004 study, titled “Increased ag­gressive behavior and decreased affiliative behavior in adult male monkeys after long-term consumption of diets rich in soy protein and isoflavones,” comes from the journal Hormones and Behavior, which found that monkeys fed a diet high in soy isoflavones became aggressive loners.² The official explanation: “Estrogen produced by aromatization of gonadal androgen has an important facilitative role in male-typical aggressive behavior that is mediated through its interaction with estrogen receptors (ER) in the brain. Isoflavones found in soybeans and soy-based dietary supplements bind ER and have dose- and tissue-dependent effects on estrogen-mediated responses.”

The estrogenic isoflavones did not make the monkeys nicer, as might be expected. Instead, diets with high levels of isoflavones made the monkeys both more aggressive and more submissive. In addition, the proportion of time spent by monkeys on high isoflavone diets in physical contact with other monkeys was reduced by 68 percent, time spent in proximity to other monkeys was reduced 50 percent and time spent alone was increased 30 percent (P’s < 0.02). Said the researchers, “The results indi­cate that long-term consumption of a diet rich in soy isoflavones can have marked influences on patterns of aggressive and social behavior.”

The implications of this study should give everyone pause. Today’s young people typically ingest large amounts of isoflavones from indus­trial foods—from soybean oil (the most widely used oil in processed food), soy protein added to many foods, including hamburger mix in schools, and a host of soy additives. If they were given soy formula, they will have received this estrogenic imprint from early life; and if they have embraced a plant-based diet, they will be ingesting soy in Impossible Burgers and other fake meat products. Carnivores get isoflavones from meat, eggs, fish and dairy foods from animals fed soy.

It is not far-fetched to assume that these estrogen-laced foods have an effect on behav­ior, making men in particular more aggressive and more anti-social, and also increasing the incidence of gender confusion.

REFERENCES

1. Takeuchi Y. Researchers in Japan use soybean com­pound to make catfish 100% femail. The Mainichi [English], May 27, 2021. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210526/p2a/00m/0sc/014000c.
2. Simona NG, Kaplan JR, Hu S, et al. Increased aggressive behavior and decreased affiliative behavior in adult male monkeys after long-term consumption of diets rich in soy protein and isoflavones, Horm Behav. 2004; 45(4): 278-284.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2021

🖨️ Print post