Dear lemmy, someone very close to my heart is starting to fall into conspiracy theories. It’s heartbreaking. Among other things, he has now told me that soy beans are not supposed to be consumed by human beings and is convinced that despite the literal centuries of human soy bean cultivation and consumption, we shouldn’t eat it or anything derived from it for this reason (ie tofu, soy sauce, etc…evidence that soy is present in other common foods doesn’t seem to register with him).
I don’t even know where he got this information from and can’t find a single source to back it up (even disingenuously). I’ve tried explaining to him that sure, in its original state it’s not edible, but undergoes processing (LIKE MANY OTHER FOODS) to become edible. And that this has gone on since at least the 11th century, so it’s not like Big Soy is trying to poison the little people.
He’s normally a very reasonable and intelligent person, and I don’t know how to reach him. I thought it might be helpful to show him where these myths have come from with hard data sources to prove it. He seems open to the possibility, so I don’t think he’s a lost cause yet!
Help?
The false belief that soy contains estrogen capable of making men less manly is one of the things that I read. It’s absolutely fake. Plants have their own chemical compounds, but they do not impact on human cells. Now you know why they keep shouting “soyboy”. Ironically, tue amount of ormones present in modern Red meat can instead impact on that. But they don’t know. So if you like your manliness you should avoid the excess of red meat, which they seem to love.
for clarity they contain (sp as this is off the top of my head) phytoestrogen. Which is as similar to estrogen as carbon dioxide is to hydrogen peroxide.
I think the “soyboy” comes from antagonism vs vegans/vegetarians.