Paxiled ur question on soy

[deepdiver]

while Japanese and Chinese people have lower rates of heart disease than we do, they have higher rates of some other diseases. For example, the Japanese have strokes at a very high rate, while the Chinese have more pancreatic and thyroid cancers than we do. Not sure I'd pick any of those afflictions over heart attack. On the other hand, I'd prefer to avoid them all!

Another is that while these folks have lower heart attack rates than Americans do at the present, they have a higher rate of heart attack than Americans did 100 years ago. What has increased in the American diet since then? Not so much egg and meat consumption, but consumption of sugar, highly processed cereals, hydrogenated vegetable oils, and processed foods in general.

But the big thing to question is whether macro nutrient balance is the important difference. ("Macro nutrient" refers to those nutrients which contribute energy -- calories -- to the diet;  fats, carbohydrates, and proteins (also alcohol.) "Micro nutrients" refers to those nutrients which do not supply calories -- vitamins, minerals, and the like. So "macro nutrient balance" refers to the ratio of fat/protein/carbohydrate.) Here's just a few other differences between the Asian diet and lifestyle and the American diet and lifestyle that I can think of:

First of all, they get the majority of their carbohydrates from vegetables, and from rice. Surely we are all clear now on the virtues of eating plenty of vegetables; this factor alone may well be tremendously powerful. As for rice, while it has a modest impact on blood sugar, it causes a paradoxically low insulin release. This means that Asian folks are getting most of their complex carbs from a low impact carbohydrate. In the meanwhile, most Americans are getting the majority of their carbs from stuff like white bread (or "wheat bread" that is mostly made from white flour; no improvement), highly processed cold cereals, potatoes, and sugar, all of which have a sky high impact on both blood sugar and insulin release. That's a big difference right there -- compared to the average American, Asian folks are eating an insulin controlling diet!

Both cultures eat less sugar than Americans do, and the communist Chinese eat very little indeed. Perhaps most importantly, their children eat far less sugar than American children do , American children now get an average of 50% of their calories from sugar, and a distressingly high part of the rest of their calories from white bread, white flour pasta, chips, cold cereal, and other similar garbage. This may well mean that Asian folks make it to maturity with a greater ability to metabolize carbohydrates safely.

Another very powerful factor that seems to be overlooked is that your average person in the People's Republic of China does not own a car -- they walk or bicycle virtually everywhere they want or need to go. A very high percentage of them do physical labor in the fields. It would be near-miraculous if all that exercise didn't make a difference in their health. Central heating is also not the commonplace that it is in much of the rest of the world; staying warm can use up a lot of extra calories. I am less certain about exercise rates in Japan, but I have certainly seen photos of Japanese urban rush hours, with the city streets clogged with bicycles.

Both Chinese and Japanese folks drink a great deal of green tea. Tea, especially green tea, contains the most powerful botanical antioxidant yet discovered. There is at least some evidence that a high intake of antioxidants will prevent heart disease, and the same antioxidants have been shown to have a protective effect against cancer.

Japanese people eat a great deal of sea food and of sea vegetables, both of which are very nutritious, and lacking in the American diet. Fish oils have, of course, been shown to exert a protective effect against heart disease. Both Chinese and Japanese people eat soy products, which  I wonder about that pancreatic and thyroid cancer.

Two more points worth mentioning which have nothing to do with heart attack rates, but everything to do with longevity rates: Both Japan and China have national health care, and neither country has widespread ownership of guns. I am not trying to make a political statement here; I am against  national health care But there is no question that fewer people will die from lack of medical care, or postponing medical care, in a country with national health care, and that very few people, comparatively, are being shot to death at an early age in these countries I'm against gun control!. It doesn't take a whole lot of teenagers and young adults getting killed to pull down the national longevity statistics pretty dramatically.
There is no reason why your low carb diet cannot incorporate sea food and sea vegetables (if you don't want to eat seaweed -- it's not high on my list of faves  plenty of other vegetables, and green and/or black tea, and we know it restricts your sugar intake! If you've chosen a program which does allow a few carbs, certainly I would recommend brown rice (or, for that matter, Japanese buckwheat noodles) over white bread and other white flour products, cold cereal, or potatoes. .

[deepdiver]

YOU ARE CORRECT ABOUT All are supported heavily by the pharmaceutical industry.  Interesting, no?  And isn't it also interesting that everything your doctor knows about medicine, with few exceptions, is based on pharmaceutical company salesmen.    

[Paxiled]

I'm not aware of any connection between iodine and Japanese lifespans.  Even Japanese in Japan who adopt a more western diet, meaning, mainly, more processed foods and meat, start to get the same diseases as Americans, and they would still be eating seaweed, meaning plenty of iodine.  And Deep, the negative info about soy starting coming out about 10 years ago, when I was still managing health food stores.  At that time, the health food business wasn't making many a lot of money -- it's still an immature business, which is why Whole Foods, backed by its venture capitalists, had such a quick and easy time monopolizing the market.  So when you asked follow the money, you were right, but on the wrong track.  As I recall, the initial negative soy studies were done by the meat, dairy, and pharmaceutical industries, which feared the growing natural foods industry.  Of course, it was silly, as the commercial grocers just bought up all the health food companies, so now everyone pushes soy.  It has appeared in about everything, and I agree with you that's never a good idea.  It's one thing to eat tofu, another to put soy in everything, especially soy protein isolate, which is what they use, not tofu.  That contains a lot of isoflavones, though probably less phytates.  

It's difficult to compare Japanese and Chinese, but you're also leaving out the Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, and Indonesians, who all eat a lot of soy.  Only the Indonesians eat tempeh as a staple; the others eat it, but only occasionally; mostly they eat tofu.  But the Chinese are only half rice eaters, and those in the south -- in the north, they eat mostly wheat.  China is a huge country with several different dietary traditions.  Keep in mind these cultures also eat other beans, and are not vegetarians, but they do eat small portions of meat compared to Americans.  Miso is eaten largely at breakfast, in a very small portion, mostly for cleansing purposes -- it's not a significant source of their daily protein.  As for rice, they eat white rice, which has little to no nutritional value to start with, then they polish it two or three times more before eating it, which makes it pretty worthless, like poi or any other tapioca-based diet.  Yet, tapioca eaters, like white rice eaters, do fine with their health.  What shortens the life of most people isn't diet, it's sanitation.  The western lifespan owes most of its elongated lifespan to modern sanitation, which began in the late eighteen hundreds, and then a little to modern medicine, such as antibiotics, and some more to the ready availability of sufficient food.  Chinese do suffer a lot of stomach cancers, but the reason is not known.  But the Japanese continue to have the longest lifespans and healthiest population despite the fact they eat a lot of soy.  And while it's true they have few guns, I really don't think violence is a large percentage of the much larger American population's mortality statistics, and Japan is extremely polluted, yet they don't get all the pollution related diseases to the extent we do here.  So something is going on, but it ain't soy.  That's all I'm saying.  And when you follow the money, keep in mind somebody pays for these "studies," and it's usually not somebody unbiased.  Same goes for the studies done by manufacturers of natural products.  They exaggerate both the quality of their studies and their conclusions.  Everyone does.  Lying seems to be built in to economics.  Too bad, but it's true; that's why we need watchdogs.  Also, while Japan has less gun violence, it has more suicides per capita, though the US is catching up.  Now, if  China and India ever clean up their water supply, watch out brother, they'll live forever, too, and the world population probably can't deal with that!

Anyway, fascinating stuff.  Can't say you're wrong because the evidence just isn't good enough; I'm just not sure common sense matches your data.  In fact, it obviously doesn't.  Which is what I thought ten years ago when the anti-soy campaign started.

Oh, and another interesting thing -- there are at least three websites that have been around for years that consider all natural medicine to be quackery because of the lack of double blind studies.  All are supported heavily by the pharmaceutical industry.  Interesting, no?  And isn't it also interesting that everything your doctor knows about medicine, with few exceptions, is based on pharmaceutical company salesmen.    

[elcyd]

I cannot remember where I read this but there was some health survey of Asian people who came to live in  the US in the 1970s/1980s and they discovered that the incidence of uncommon disease for Asians grew due to change of diet in America.

They initially concluded it was due to the diminished quantity of tofu that they consumed and of course the increase in high carb, high sugar diet but then when the data was reassessed in the 1990s, it was confirmed that it was due to the lack of iodine in their US diets compared to what they consume in Asia.  The average amount of iodine consumed on a daily basis in Japan is 12.5mg.  The RDA in the western world is 150mcg (nearly 100X less).

Cindy :)