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> It's easier to supplement with whey or soy protein. Soy is a rather poor source of protein (phyto-estrogens, etc). Whey is a waste product of the cheese indu
by tcj_phx 10y ago
> It's easier to supplement with whey or soy protein.
Soy is a rather poor source of protein (phyto-estrogens, etc). Whey is a waste product of the cheese industry.
(Edit: All things considered, milk is a pretty good source of protein.) The milk cow is the most efficient means of converting the grass on a rocky hillside into human-edible protein (ref: some old book I have somewhere. They're all in boxes). The fat in grass-fed milk is more orange than industrial milk because there is more vitamins A & E (and beta carotene) in the milk than is in cottonseed meal (a waste product of the cotton industry that is commonly fed to dairy cows in a feedlot).
- plorg 10y agoHere in Iowa we grow corn to feed our cows (different, I assume HN-ers could guess, from human-edible sweetcorn). I don't know about the vitamin load. I assume it's probably less-good than that of the random plants on marginal land. On the other hand, we don't have much for rocky hills or crags around here. In this case, we'd probably be better off using our land to grow a wide variety of nutritious foods besides the corn and soybeans that have become the monoculture here.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago>"Soy is a rather poor source of protein (phyto-estrogens, etc)" Regarding phyto-estrogens, from what I've seen there are positives as well as negatives. What in particular puts you off them? To anyone reading this who hasn't heard about phyto-estrogens, and thinks of estrogens as a female-only hormone, it should be noted that males have estrogen receptors too, and phyto-estrogens are part of vegetables widely accepted as being healthy, such as carrots, apples, lentils, oats, barley, etc...
- mistercow 10y agoMost importantly, isoflavones does not have any effect on male sex hormones. That means no effect on your workout, no effect on your drive, and no effect on your reproductive health. Or at least, no plausible reason for an effect on those things.
- mhurron 10y agoThere was a myth that was well circulated 10-15? years ago (as soy products were becoming more available in the US) that said soy estrogen would turn men and boys into effeminate pansies and we'd all grow girl boobs.
- tcj_phx 10y agoMany environmental toxins are estrogenic. This means that they cause tissues to swell and divide sort-of like human estrogens. Some xenoestrogens are more toxic than others. Plant xeno-estrogens are more innocuous than industrial xenoestrogens.
- mistercow 10y agoSoy phytoestrogens are basically a myth. Soy isoflavones are structurally similar to estrogen, so it was a reasonable hypothesis that they would behave like estrogen in the human body. But this has mostly not been born out by evidence. In particular, it is now clear that soy isoflavones have no measurable impact on male sex hormones. Isoflavones do have some impact on estrogen receptors (the correct term for this is "selective estrogen receptor modulator"), and indeed this causes some health benefits. But in healthy humans, there is very little reason to think they cause any negative effects. I think most of the fear mongering about this has come from body builders, who worry that soy will lower their testosterone and sabotage their efforts. This we now know it does not do.