Drinking one glass of soymilk is equivalent to popping 6 birth control pills at once.
complete bunk. don't take it personally, but it's best to read the full thread preceding before accidentally falling for, and ignorantly re-posting, urban legends like this into the discussion. the post that came two after mine on the previous page included this link,
http://www.t-nation.com/article/diet_and_nutrition/soy_whats_the_big_deal&cr=which includes this observation:
Before we go on, let's do something very important — something many authors fail to do. Let's put these rat studies into a real life perspective.
We'll start by looking at an adult male who weighs 190 pounds (86 kg). If he were to consume 20 mg/kg of PE's like the initial rat study indicated, that'd be 86 kg x 20 mg, leading to a total of 1,720 mg of PE's per day.
Do you have any idea how much soy that'd be?!
If not, have a look at the following table. It gives you an idea of the amount of PE's found in soy foods.
Food Serving Total Isoflavones (mg)
Soy protein concentrate, water wash
3.5 oz
102
Soy protein concentrate, alcohol wash
3.5 oz
12
Miso
1/2 cup
59
Soybeans, cooked
1/2 cup
47
Tempeh
3 ounces
37
Soybeans, dry roasted
1 ounce
37
Soy milk
1 cup
30
Tofu based yogurt
1/2 cup
21
Tofu
3 ounces
20
Soybeans, green, cooked (edamame)
1/2 cup
12
Soy hot dog
1 hot dog
11
Soy sausage
3 links
3
Soy cheese, mozzarella
1 oz
2
As you can see from the table, our hypothetical male is very, very unlikely to consume 1,720 mg of PE's from food.
Check out the following menu:
1 cup of cooked soybeans = 94 mg
6 ounces of tempeh = 74 mg
2 cups of soy milk = 60 mg
6 ounces of tofu = 40 mg
2 soy hot dogs = 22 mg
4 oz of soy cheese = 8 mg
Total = 298 mg
Soy overload, for sure, right?
Yet, it only supplies 289 mg of PE's. That's one-fifth of what might be required to lower Testosterone levels.
So, let's get real here. It's unlikely that Testosterone problems would occur if someone were to eat a moderate amount of whole-food soy products.
A more traditional daily intake of soy for someone may look more like this:
8 ounces of tofu = 53 mg
1/2 cup soy milk = 15 mg
1/2 cup edamame = 12 mg
Total = 80 mg of PE's
Taking it to human studies, data on patients with prostate cancer showed that the intake of 80 mg/day of PE's didn't significantly alter Testosterone levels.
To go one step further, an intake of PE's up to 16 mg/kg of body weight had no significant influence on behavior or physical characteristics.
Taking the dose up again, another study found that 84 straight days of consuming 450 to 900 mg/day of PE's lowered DHEA levels and had estrogenic side effects in males with prostate cancer. Not necessarily good. However, skim over the chart above to determine how much soy food that'd be. It's a freakin' lot!
i'm a vegan and even i don't consume close to 300 mg in a day - let alone 1,720!
a mistake like the one you cite naively relies on the idea that a phytoestrogen is equivalent to regular human estrogen, which i already mentioned, it is not, it is a fraction of it, about
1/500th of it i believe, and there are suggestions it could even interfere with the effect of the regular stuff.
more proof that the meat and dairy industry's lies are easily swallowed and passed on by the uninformed
can we try putting this pseudoscientific myth to bed again once and for all please? thanks.