World Nut Daily: Soy is making kids 'gay'!

[Dinner]

That's right ladies and gentlemen, the far right wing online publication World Net Daily is now claiming that the increased use of health food is responsible for making young people homosexual. You'd better buy more fastfood because if you buy healthy tofu then your ass is going to be a dirty homo-gay.

Soy is making kids 'gay'

Posted: December 12, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.
Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food.

The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327

There's more but I don't feel like reprinting the whole article so if you want to read the whole thing then follow the link. The basic claim being made is that soy contains trace amounts of estrogens so therefor if your young boy eats tofu he will become gay. Someone needs to explain to this anti-science idiot that acid denatures proteins. I truly wonder where the far right keeps finding this completely uneducated people.

I will, however, give one more quote from this terrible rightwing article:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality.

ZOMFG! You'd better stop going to those hippy health food stores or your penis will shrink and you'll get a sudden urge to be rammed in the ass!

Let's see... The Chinese have been using soy as one of their primary sources of protein for around 8,000 years and there are currently 1.3 billion Chinese in China. Yep, all of the Chinese turned gay and stopped breeding centuries ago.

[Dinner]

A great response from one of the best science blogs I've run across:

What a terrific title: A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals! It's from Wingnut Daily, of course, and it's simply one of their kooks taking a germ of fact and amplifying it into a flaming reactionary whimper of fear. He's complaining about soy.

Soybeans do contain compounds called isoflavones that resemble and weakly mimic estrogens. I've read a few papers that discuss their possible effects on human physiology, and they usually fall into the category of "Hmmm...suggestive, no evidence either way yet, needs more study." Our wingnut author seems to have a different source than the scientific literature, though, because he makes some rather definitive claims.

Doctors used to hope soy would reduce hot flashes, prevent cancer and heart disease, and save millions in the Third World from starvation. That was before they knew much about long-term soy use. Now we know it's a classic example of a cure that's worse than the disease. For example, if your baby gets colic from cow's milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don't even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal. If he is a she, brace yourself for watching her reach menarche as young as seven, robbing her of years of childhood. If he is a boy, it's far worse: He may not reach puberty till much later than normal.

So, I searched PubMed, and there's nothing on soy and menarche or menstruation; I found a few articles on soy and puberty, and they say things like "The literature offers no evidence of endocrine effects in humans from infant consumption of modern soy-based formulas" and "To date, no adverse effects of short- or long-term use of soy proteins have been observed in humans and exposure to soy-based infant formulas does not appear to lead to different reproductive outcomes than exposure to cow milk formulas" and "Available evidence from adult human and infant populations indicates that dietary isoflavones in soy infant formulas do not adversely affect human growth, development, or reproduction." There are many more papers on its putative effects on breast cancer and the symptoms of menopause, and even there it's a study in ambiguity: some reports of slight positive effects, many more stating that there isn't a detectable effect.

There doesn't seem to be any strong evidence that eating tofu will turn your sons into girlie-boys, I'm afraid; there are better grounds to be concerned about known endocrine disruptors like atrazine and PCBs.

Of course, I have failed to take into the synergistic effects of water fluoridation, that commie plot, or the corrupting influence of Big Agriculture on science, that capitalist plot. I am amused at the fact, though, that here in rural Minnesota, where the kids rail against those homosexuals, that one of the most important crops these kids' parents raise is soybeans. I wonder what the effect of this WND wingnuttery would be on conservative farmers out here? I expect that would trigger a more strongly measurable response than what the soybeans are doing to their gonads.

Ah, but what do I know. The author has impeccable credentials.

James Rutz is chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries. He is the author of "MEGASHIFT: Igniting Spiritual Power," and, most recently, "The Meaning of Life."

See? He's a gladhanding Jesus-promoter who makes his money founding "ministries" and selling self-help books. You can trust him.

http://www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

[DRoseDARs]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=160574

[/joke; don't actually close thread]

[Nubclear]

Well, that explains Asia's low population.

[LordShiva]

Soy was suspected of increasing oestrogen levels, but that claim hasn't been verified by experiment and is now largely ignored.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Soy was suspected of increasing oestrogen levels, but that claim hasn't been verified by experiment and is now largely ignored.

Indian men have small cheneys.
India is in Asia.
QED aka PWND

[LordShiva]

Indians don't eat soy

BTW change your avatar to the one I made for you

[Proteus_MST]

So why doesn´t he use the same arguments against Beer?

The hops used in the production of beer (and also the beer itself) also contains phytohormones that are estrogen like (which is speculated by some to be one of the reasons why many male notorious beer drinkers could use Bras with Cup A or even B without problems )

[Sava]

Re: World Nut Daily: Soy is making kids 'gay'!

ZOMFG! You'd better stop going to those hippy health food stores or your penis will shrink and you'll get a sudden urge to be rammed in the ass!

Let's see... The Chinese have been using soy as one of their primary sources of protein for around 8,000 years

uhmmm... this is not a good defense...

we all know azn guys have small cheneys

I think this guy may actually be on to something.

[Elok]

Yes, Sava, but your average E. Asian woman has a distressing lack of both funbags and "junk in the trunk." Indian women, who don't eat much soy, have curves, but when it comes to China and Japan...sad. This pseudo-estrogen doesn't seem to be pulling its weight.

[Heresson]

at homosoyfobia

[SlowwHand]

Soy and gay are nearly spelled the same.

[DRoseDARs]

Girl, this thread is soy gay.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Tassi
Well, that explains Asia's low population.

I say the more gay dudes the better considering China's one-child policy has led to a 57/50 male-female birth ratio.

The last thing we need is a nuclear power taken over by tens of millions of angry unemployed straight males in their prime who aren't getting laid...

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Darius871


I say the more gay dudes the better considering China's one-child policy has led to a 57/50 male-female birth ratio.

The last thing we need is a nuclear power taken over by tens of millions of angry unemployed straight males in their prime who aren't getting laid...

57% / 50% ratio? Get thee to yon math thread where ye belong...