Videos and articles from Dr Mercola on soy.
The real truth will be found once you look past big agriculture funding.

The truth?  Mercola is twisting things and even outright wrong on a lot of what he is claiming.  For example he claims that low cholesterol is dangerous and since soy lowers cholesterol that this makes it bad.  VERY misleading.  There are a lot of foods that lower cholesterol this does not make them bad.  And he did not point out that the liver synthesizes the majority of the cholesterol our bodies need.  The sterols in the soy are only going to bind the cholesterol being released in the gut keeping some of it from being reabsorbed.  Some of this cholesterol is going to be expelled in the feces anyway.  So does he also think that constipation is good since it keeps us from losing that cholesterol?  The only thing he got right in that statement is the fact that low cholesterol is dangerous.  But if the liver is working properly then this is not an issue since the liver produces cholesterol when we need it and breaks it down when it is too high.

As to his claims about phytic acid, this again is misleading.  As I have pointed out several times in the past first of all phytic acid is found in seeds, including grains.  So why is soy being singled out unless the person has an agenda to make soy look bad?  And as I also pointed out phytic acid has a higher affinity for heavy metals and iron that can harm us than it does for beneficial minerals.

His real whopper is his claims about the phytoestrogens in relation to cancer and birth defects.  First of all phytoestrogens average 200 to 400 times weaker than the body's own estrogens.  So you would have to consume more phytoestrogens that you could possibly ingest to even equal the estrogenic activity you would normally find in the body.  So this is one of the most persistent myths being spread around the net.  And they do not promote cancer, they inhibit cancer.  Due to their weak nature they lock on to estrogen receptor sites blocking stronger cancer causing estrogens from locking on.  If they don't lock on to these receptors they have no effects on the body.  Therefore phytoestrogens are well known anti-cancer agents.  For example red clover blossom has a long history of being used in the treatment of cancer.  Red clover blossom contains the same two phytoestrogens found is soy, plus two others.

It is also these phytoestrogens that numerous studies have shown that improve bone strength, not the vitamin K as he is claiming.

The biggest laugh is his claim that phytoestrogens increase the risk of birth defects by 500%.  Where does Mercola come up with this garbage?!!!  Phytoestrogens are found in virtually everything you eat. sage, parsley, yams, peas, kudzu, beans, carrots, bananas, oranges, grains, barley, grapes, baker's yeast, beets, pomegranates, cherries, garlic, oats, olives, peppers, sunflower seeds, flax seed, rye, spinach, sesame seeds, pumpkin, rhubarb, tomatoes, rice, plums, potatoes, papaya, dates, eggplant, anise, fennel, cucumber, peanuts, and onions are just a few examples of the many phytoestrogen sources we eat on a daily basis.  According to his ridiculous claim we should have all been born with birth defects and be dying from cancer!!!

I would be curious to see his diet.  Being that if he is trying to avoid all isoflavones, since they are estrogenic, this would eliminate all plants.  So this would leave meats and dairy, which both tend to be loaded with very strong estrogens that are hundreds to thousands of times stronger than phytoestrogens.  And if he eats fish then he has to deal with the mercury he is also paranoid of.  Our water is contaminated and many alcohols are loaded with phytoestrogens.  So I guess Mercola must not eat or drink anything.

I ran a search under "tofu and Alzheimer's" and  "soy and Alzheimer's" to find the study he claims about the Japanese men having a higher risk of Alzheimer's.  No such study came up in PubMed anywhere.  Only studies showing soy can inhibit cognitive decline.  In other words prevent problems such as dementia and Alzheimer's.

He then complains that soy is high in manganese.  But he just got done complaining about the phytic acid, which binds minerals like manganese.  I guess he just ignored that fact since his goal is to badmouth soy with false propaganda!

Then he claims it is a goitergen, which is semi-true.  Soy has goitergenic activity IF it is not cooked or fermented.  All soy products I have seen are either cooked or fermented, so this is not an issue.  I wonder why Mercola is not having a fit over goitergenic foods normally eaten raw and unfermented like broccoli, cabbage, turnips, strawberries, pears, peaches, spinach, pine nuts,  radishes, cauliflower.........?

What is ironic is that Mercola calls flax seed a superfood.  But flax contains about 250% higher levels of goitorgenic and in his words carcinogenic phytoestrogens than soy.  And unlike soy, which is cooked and fermented destroying many of the phytoestrogens, flax seed is not meaning it retains all of its extremely high levels of phytoestrogens.

Apparently his desire to spread false propaganda about soy far exceeds his ability to do use common sense and to do real research on the subject.  So I am not going to spend all day discussing his various other mistakes.  Again, people should not rely on propaganda websites for their information.  They should do their own research to verify claims.  PubMed is a good place to start to see what studies have really been done and to see how those studies were done and interpreted.  Here is a link to PubMed:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

 Can you elaborate between types of soy consumption? There's a huge difference between the traditional asian use of soy(mostly fermented, and not a huge part of the diet), and the way westerners are consuming it now(soy milk, soy burgers, soy protein isolate, soy energy bars, soylent green, etc).

Soylent green? That is people. You may not be old enough to remember that movie.

As long as the soy is cooked or fermented then the goitergenic activity is inactivated. I don't know of any commercial soy product that is not fermented  or subjected to sufficient heat to inactivate the goitergens.

As for the cancer claims, it does not cause cancer just like all the many other phytoestrogen containing plants we ingest every day do not cause cancer. The phytoestrogens are estrogen antagonists, and thus protect us from cancer. I covered all of this is my previous post.

It is easy to manipualte studies though to make something appear dangerous. There was a study that claimed that chromium picolinate caused cancer. When you looked at the actual study what they had done was gave they gave the mice 6,000 times the equivalent dose that would be given to a human. Using that protocol we could prove that every single pharmaceutical drug and even water is 100% fatal!!! Again, this is why I tell people to not get their information from propaganda sites, but to actually look at the studies done to see how they were performed and interpreted.

And all those that are anti-soy from reading these propaganda sites should ask themselves this simple question. Since at least one of the "bad" things in soy such as phytoestrogens and goitergens are found in EVERY single plant we eat for food why is soy being singled out? This should show people right there that the anti-soy propaganda sites have a strong enough agenda to prove soy is dangerous that they will use any false claim or manipulated study they can find to try and prove soy is dangerous.