Nigel and I talked about this a bit. Is anyone eating Tofu and do you have any thoughts on it? I must be coming in late in the healthy game because I thought Tofu was going to be the replacement for beef/pork/chicken.

Now I hear about phytoestrogens and how eating soy can cause an increase in estrogen. Not good for men. Is soy just another "man"-u-factured food?

Its healthy, but nasty. I refuse to touch the stuff. Eat a salad instead, eat only Xtra Lean Beef and use in moderation, or substitute with non-fried/breaded chicken, turkey, or tuna.

As for the estrogen......Have you ever known any commonly eaten non-modified food to severely increase either estrogen or testosterone? If you eat a TON of it, maybe, but, then again, even water in a large enough dose is deadly.

ive cut back on beef and dairy to where its maybe 10% of past consumption. seems every time i eat the stuff, i feel a lot more inflammation and soreness in my joints. something i dont get from venison or bison. I dont eat pork,and one can get really sick of chicken.
although i do eat fair share of tilapia, salmon (prefer atlantic over pacific, less fishyness) and sometimes when i catch it. trout. i do love orange roughy and chilean sea bass. but overfishing leaves my concience in a conundrum.

tofu tastes like whatever you cook it in. heh.

there is talk of a lot of problems soy can bring, and its beginning to list up. phytoestrogens in children are bringing about early puberty, problems with endocrine and thyroid function, immune system issues etc.

true or not? hmm. time tells i guess. but id prefer to miss the soy experience.

read labels, youll see how much the stuff has pervaded our dietary regimen on a usual basis. you might think twice about specifically eating the stuff on top of it all.

cheers
N.

*any* unfermented soy is unhealthy - screws with your endocrine system. The "increase in estrogen" explanation is really too simplistic to be useful, but these links are helpful:

www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtsoy.html

www.mothering.com/articles/growing_child/food/soy_story.html
(this article is among the better you'll find online becaase it links to sources, and because it links to feedback recieved about the article & has the authors responses to that feedback).

so all those soy dogs and soy milk and soy protein bars and should be avoided at all costs. Mushrooms are a far better non meat meat replacement. Protien can come from bee pollen, quinoa, nuts and beans.

It's also worth looking at why you want to replace meat in the first place. If it has to do with thoughts that meat is "unhealthy" or that eating less meat is "more healthy", that's simply not a true assumption.

Meat, including red meat, is indeed very healthy if you're eating healthy animals. So, free range beef/lamb/chickens or wild game eating a natural diet and not pumped up with drugs is good, but feedlot beef or chicken is bad. Its simply an issue that if the animal itself is unhealthy, its not going to be healthy to eat.

There's also a terrible misconception about fat and cholesterol being unhealthy. This is simply untrue. If you look at the rates of heart disease, people with high cholesterol don't have heart attacks more often than people with low cholesterol.

a very detailed look into this can be found in "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. That's a very thorough, well researched book that is a must read before one gets pressured into the "you need to take cholesterol lowering drugs or you'll die of heart disease" bullshit. I should say that its a very dense read; not casual at all, and pretty academic. But its got more substance thanmost of the "cholesterol conspiracy books" taht get the idea right but come across as unfounded.

The cholesterol is bad myth is perpetuated partly (mainly) because statin drugs are the number one money makers for drug companies (and now they want to put your eight year olds on them). If this sounds too conspiracy theory for you, I'd suggest you look at how the drug companies handled the whole Vioxx situation.

Most people are better off making sure they're getting their essential nutrition (from food, ideally) and exercising than by avoiding meat.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bittersweet,

bittersweet i saw that story today while on treadmill at the gym. kids on statins. grrrreat.


he's right. eating natural is far better than better living via chemistry.

best N.

statin drugs are dangerous, and the side effects are grossly under reported:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...AR2007082401714.html

They work by inhibiting the liver's ability to produce cholesterol. This means they inhibit every physiological process that relies on cholesterol produced by the liver, which includes things like producing energy (ATP) in the cells, producing healthy, pliable cell membranes, procuding CoQ 10 (which is necessary), producing hormones (including sex hormones), allowing brain cells to communicate (alzheimer's like sympoms are a common side effect of statins)... I could go on.

Statins side effects are common in adults. Now imagine the effects on children, who are still building their bodies.

May be it is really oversimple, but, bear with me, please.Men are omnivourous. ANd there are articles out there to prove that any kind of food is good or bad. So am I wrong in eating a bit of everything, meat,veggie, pasta, whatever, everything is probably a bit poisonous, or that is what the news want to make us believe,but I guess if I eat a bit and not too much of everything none of these foods will prove fatal.

Great point, Snowflake! Everything in moderation, including meat, dairy, eggs, chocolate, alcohol, veggies, grains, fruits, yada yada yada... Unfortunately it's something we seem to forget a lot. So simple a concept, yet so underused

Chocolate in moderation? That's sacrilegious!

Lol, SSM, well spoken; in theory I see your point but funnily enough I have really lost my taste for chocolate in the last years. I still like it, in the form of milk shake, the occasional cake or chocolate muesly, but it is only very mild, no chocolate cravings at all. I get more lusty about salty things... chips are the most dangerous food ever invented, lol.

Did you just use the word, "funnily"? LOL

Funnily is not an english word? Ah well, I guess I was creative.

It is actually, I just googled it. An adverb to be exact. I am now putting down my grammar police badge and going back to my morning fix of nakedness on the net.

I don´t exclude at all that my english may have slipped and smacked its bottom on the floor there, but thanks

I agree entirely with the everything in moderation (well, except for legitimate food allergies where the body has developed antibodies to gluten, casien, ect), but its worth recognizing that people apply that very good perspective without balance.

Yeah, chocolate, alcohol, soda or whatever is fine in moderation, but unfortunately, most people don't get vital nutrients in moderation. Pretty much the entire population of america gets way too much calcium and is grossly magnesium deficient. Almost all americans are vitamin d deficient. Almost all americans are deficient in Omega 3 essential fatty acids. I could go on (and the problems also exist in most industrialized cultures outside the US), checking off the vitmains and minerals, with the exception of potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen, which we get in excess from chemical fertilizers.

Even if we eat healthy foods, if we don't get them from sustainably managed sources, we don't get nutrition from them. An apple today has proably lost over 90% of the mineral nutrition it had 50 years ago, because poor land management has depleted the soil. You can apply that to pretty much all food; even animals.

And a large chunk of illness, whether its a diagnosed disease of just a lack of wellness, has to do with the fact that we're feeding ourseves all kinds of things that have no substance, leading to an overweight, undernourished populace.

And the modern medical establishment would rather address this situation by giving drugs to suppress the symptoms of nutrient deficiency than actually encourage nutrition.

As for soy in moderation, me personally would say that's OK if it's fermented, unless you also like thyroid problems and in moderation. But that's just my opinion.