According to the study, it seems that consuming regular really only impacted men who were overweight or obese. I'd be interested in understanding if this really had something to do with the men being overweight and something they were previously eating was causing their sperm count to be abnormally high for their level of health.
This association was stronger at the higher end of the sperm concentration distribution suggesting that soy food intake may have stronger associations among men with normal or high sperm concentrations than among men with low sperm concentration. Also, soy food intake was more strongly inversely related to sperm concentration among overweight and obese men. Intake of soy foods or isoflavones was unrelated to the remaining semen analysis parameters examined.
I love how highly, highly processed foods are suddenly A-OK to many people here once it's a fake meat product.
>But high-temperature processing has the unfortunate side effect of so denaturing the other proteins in soy that they are rendered largely ineffective.23 That's why animals on soy feed need lysine supplements for normal growth.
>Nitrites, which are potent carcinogens, are formed during spray-drying, and a toxin called lysinoalanine is formed during alkaline processing.24 Numerous artificial flavorings, particularly MSG, are added to soy protein isolate and textured vegetable protein products to mask their strong "beany" taste and to impart the flavor of meat.25
>In feeding experiments, the use of SPI increased requirements for vitamins E, K, D, and B12 and created deficiency symptoms of calcium, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, copper, iron, and zinc.26 Phytic acid remaining in these soy products greatly inhibits zinc and iron absorption; test animals fed SPI develop enlarged organs, particularly the pancreas and thyroid gland, and increased deposition of fatty acids in the liver.27
I shouldn't even have to post about "Textured Wheat Protein" but it's essentially another denatured protein, one that is completely doused in glyphosate right before harvest..
There's no gentle way to make the complaint about I'm about to: going to Mercola.com for good health science is roughly equivalent to referring to the Flat Earth Society for good GPS algorithms. Joe Mercola has developed a multimillion dollar business which is essentially built on telling his audience that everything in the world is poisonous unless he sells it to them. When I say he's one of the folks who believe that fluoridation is a nefarious government conspiracy, I am not kidding. He also believes coffee enemas will fight cancer. Again, I am not making this up.
There's conflicting evidence about soy's health benefits, which is a sentence that is, generally speaking, just as true after a "s/soy/any_damn_food" operation. Nitrites are highly toxic in quantity, but in small quantity, they've been used in food processing since the Middle Ages. It's what you cure meat with. Most of the nitrites in your diet, though, are naturally occurring.
And while no one claims MSG has massive health benefits, it's been extremely well established that it's harmless. It's just a salt. I'm sure Doc Mercola will tell me the decades of tests that show it's safe are simply a sign that every first world health agency is in the pocket of Big Umami, but y'know, color me skeptical.
> And while no one claims MSG has massive health benefits, it's been extremely well established that it's harmless. It's just a salt.
While it's true that MSG is well-studied and about as well-established as safe as can be, “It’s just a salt” is, well, not support for it’s safety; potassium cyanide is also just a salt, and no one (sane, at least) is going to argue that it is safe to ingest.
The Mercola article has citations, which you ignored. There is also a link to a MIT paper which you ignored, and deals with the main ingredient in the product at hand.
>When I say he's one of the folks who believe that fluoridation is a nefarious government conspiracy, I am not kidding.
Fluoride lowers IQ in children an average of 15 points, per Harvard meta-analysis.
>researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and China Medical University in Shenyang for the first time combined 27 studies and found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children.
So... what exactly is he wrong about when it comes to fluoride?
You are blinded by your bias against this one Doctor, enough to miss the main points regarding why these foods are total shit.
> Fluoride lowers IQ in children an average of 15 points, per Harvard meta-analysis.
No. Aside from the fact that meta-analyses are primarily a means of identifying areas for direct research because they have a strong tendency to magnify publication bias (among other problems), that's not what the cited piece concludes. Your own quote shows that the conclusion is much weaker, noting that the meta-analysis “found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children.”
Finding strong indications that it has a possibility (“may” ≠ “does”) of causing some adverse reaction is not the same as concluding that it does have any adverse impact, and even farther from any particular quantification of that impact. And the actual average result (which isn't a study conclusion on the actual impact) was 7, not 15 IQ points for “high flouride content”; to quote your source: “The average loss in IQ was reported as a standardized weighted mean difference of 0.45, which would be approximately equivalent to seven IQ points for commonly used IQ scores with a standard deviation of 15.”
You're right, it's 7 points. However, that means there are still considerable issues (both medical and ethical) with the mass-ingesting of fluoride, which lends more credibility to Mercola's paranoia than your skepticism, in my opinion. And regardless of that, you are still ignoring all the main issues brought up with TVP.
You acknowledge that you got the number wrong, which is good, but the smaller problem. The bigger problem is that the number was not, in either case, an impact concluded by the meta-analyses, it was merely the average impact of high flouridation in the studies included.
> However, that means there are still considerable issues (both medical and ethical) with the mass-ingesting of fluoride
No, it doesn't. Again, the source you cite does not conclude that there is any adverse effect. The meta-analysis, according to it's authors, indicates only that there may be an adverse effect.
Even the follow-up study by the authors (linked from your source; meta-analyses rarely support strong conclusions about fact, but often provide direction for further research) seems to indicate some effect, especially at high dosage levels but again, mostly is an indicator for further research, not a basis for concluding a clearly quantified effect.
Without a qauntifiable effect tied to actual flouride levels, it's not clear if there is any probl with the actual flouridation practice in the United States. Almost every substance is harmful in excess, even ones where moderate amounts are better than none.
I love how the anti-vaxer Mercola keeps being referenced here on HN every time someone wants to make a case against veganism. In fact, every single anti-vegan blog out there links to the same Mercola articles.
>Full Ingredient List:
>Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Konjac Gum, Xanthan Gum, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12.
>Contains:
>Soy, Wheat
This contains soy. My comment stands.