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?
Here’s my (fallible) understanding of the nugget of truth behind the soy nonsense.
Plants contain something called phytoestrogen. It has a similar shape and function in plants to estrogen in humans. Soy contains a lot of it.
However, since it is made of different chemicals to estrogen it does not act like estrogen in humans.
Still, because it has the word “estrogen” in it, a lot of idiots think it will cause you to become weak and grow tits if you eat soy. You know, like a woman. Hence the “soyboy” memes and the use of the term as an insult, mostly by woman-hating alt-right goons.
It’s possible your friend is covertly falling for the fallacy, or perhaps their concern is several times removed; i.e. they fell for someone’s lie based on a lie based on a lie based on bigotry.
Fun fact, dairy milk actually contains proper estrogen, like all the lactations of mamals.
So you really expect me to believe a lactating woman produces hormones?
Not just woman but also lactating cow, camel, goat, cat, dog, monkey… unbelievable right.
What about argonians?
Depends, what is their profession? Are they “lusty”?
Don’t know about their milk, but they surely knead some great dough.
Snitties aren’t a thing with reptiles.
This is more complicated, as is often the case. The phytoestrogen in soy does have similar effects on people as human estrogen, and the effects can be rather positive (regulation of weight and better insuline sensitivity). Source here.
The same review mentions potencial negative effects and concerns: “In adult male rats, exposure to dietary soy decreased androgen levels and prostate weight.” and “In humans, the use of soy or purified phytoestrogens in women at high risk of, or diagnosed with, breast cancer as well as in infants fed with soy-based formula are legitimate areas of concern.”
Both beneficial and adverse effects of soy seem to be understudied. For more information about soy phytoestrogens and both male and female fertility, check out this article.
use of soy or purified phytoestrogens
Which one? Soy or purified phytoestrogens?
Sentences constructed like that can easily be weaponized.
It’s a review based on a number of scientific papers that research either one or the other. I think based on the results of the studies the authors decided it was safe to write about both phytoestrogen contained in whole soy and the purified one, because the concerns connectedto both these things are similar. I think that’s legitimate.
I would take that to be “use of either soy or purified phytoestrogens”.
This is more complicated, as is often the case
Impossible, @Heavybell assured my it’s a conspiracy theory peddled by woman-hating alt-right goons
Come on, people, what’s up with the downvotes? This is a very obvious /s and I appreciate it as a response :)
Sir, we’re on the internet discussing conspiracy theories. About if a extremely common condiments and milk substitution ingredients, can turn you into a woman. There is nothing like a obvious s.
But I do admit I did also really like the response and it does fall closer to the obvious s than some other ones, but you really can’t be to sure this days.
I got told to be careful of soy milk once by a conspiracy theorist buddy. Said it’ll turn me into a woman.
Hundred percent this conspiracy theory has bigoted roots.
This was going to be my guess too. I’ve heard the “soy contains estrogen and can screw up your body if you eat too much.” nonsense.
I hate when people say stuff like that as they drink their 4th can of Coca-Cola of the day.
Mix that together with that soy often is involved in meat replacements for vegans, and the alt-right idea that eating meat is manly, preferably while mixed with beer and cigarettes.
The first time I saw headlines on the internet about this, I wasn’t sure what to think. I was hanging out with a friend and I saw him put soy milk in his coffee. I asked him if he’d seen the news about estrogen. He hadn’t. I related it as best I could, and he listened, giving me some pretty skeptical side eye.
I closed with “I dunno, if it’s something you put in your body every single day it might be worth finding out more. Before, you know…”
“IT WORKS JUST FINE,” he said, and that was the end of that conversation!
I mean, you’re not wrong. And someone else replying suggested maybe soy does have some effect. However I feel like the MtF trans community would be up in arms with joy if they could just drink soy milk instead of taking estrogen pills, plus we’d probably have heard something from asian countries where soy is consumed a lot more if it was that bad for you.
“Soy boy” is commonly used by MAGAs as a derogatory term to mean a feminine man. There was some rumor about how soy could mimic estrogen in the body (not really true) and so they believe that eating soy products makes men feminine. This is obviously bullshit, but maybe it’s somehow spiraled from “real men shouldn’t eat soy” into “no one should eat soy”
There are phytoestrogens in soy. Know what has even more than tofu? Beer. Remind them that when they use the term “soy boy” and ask if they’re feminine enough to drink beer
The best part is that phytoestrogen does next to nothing to humans, you need mammalian estrogen instead. You know where you find lots of that? Cows milk
so the milk made me an art student
CURSE YOU COWS
Yup, it’s a conservative talking point. It was originally a rebellion against vegetarianism/veganism/etc and all of the meat alternatives. Lots of “they’re trying to take away our meat because they hate America and nothing is more American than eating steak and burgers” type of rhetoric. The soy-based alternatives were an easy target for conservatives to rile up their readers, because the vast majority of vegans are progressives.
Then conspiracy theorists took that and ran with it. There is a strong correlation between conspiracy theorists and conservatives. It’s not an “every conspiracy theorist is conservative” situation, but the correlation is very strong. So conspiracy theorists will tend to mirror conservative talking points, then take it a step further by injecting the conspiracy theorist side of things into it. The “they’re trying to take away our beef because they hate god” talking points quickly morphed into “they’re trying to force soy on us to make us more liberal.”
And in the conservative’s mind, when they think of liberals, they think of blue hair, crying about pronouns, and effeminate men. So naturally, that’s where the conspiracy theorists ran with it. The “they’re using soy to turn us liberal” suddenly turned into “they’re using soy to turn us effeminate.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest the commonality been conservatives and conspiracy theorists is poor critical thinking skills.
I’d wager its also got something to do with how prevalent soy is used in various Asian cuisines, so like anything even remotely tangentially related to China is also a commie plot to take over The West™ in addition to the whole “soy mimics estrogen” thing.
Just tell them how many Good White Americans™ living in flyover country make a living farming soybeans and watch their head explode.
Yeah it would blow his mind knowing that China is the biggest importer of pureblooded American soy beans.
Oh yes, I’m quite familiar, the first university I went to was surrounded by corn and soybean fields.
Nobody’s head is going to explode. Most conservatives are well aware that soybeans are an American croup and are even proud of the fact. They just think that the soybeans should be served to cows.
Vilifying people you don’t like is no way to establish understanding or communication.
This itself is a conspiracy theory. I’ve known a lot of right-wing people, and none of them made a connection between Soy and Asian cuisine. They don’t like tofu, in particular, because they didn’t grow up with it and see it as some weird, hippy thing.
Initially I thought this was his concern but he never mentioned anything gender specific, just that humans as a whole shouldn’t eat soy as it’s “not food”…as though it’s plastic or something. I agree that it’s probably a result of the social media telephone game, though. I just wish I could find the original source so I can prepare a good argument
Wait until MAGAs fund out what military burgers are made of…
If harvested while young, soybeans can be eaten in their original state as edamane. (You can just steam the beans and eat) They have to be processed for human consumption when left to fully mature.
Edamame is extremely tasty sprinkled with a little salt, or drizzled with a little sesame oil and chili powders.
And contains a lot of proteins, so much away vegans!
Edamame is delicious and not only that but extremely healthy.
Scientific illiteracy. People think phytoestrogen is the same as human estrogen.
The thing that makes me giggle is that many animal products, particularly breast milk, do have estrogen in them. Not in particularly significant quantities though but it’s hilarious.
Which is even more hilarious when you find out there are body builders out there who buy breast milk for their gains.
All milk is breast milk. You mean human breast milk.
What’s crazy to me is that people are so weirded out by the thought of a grown up consuming human breast milk all the while cow, goat, sheep, camel etc are considered nOrMaL for adult human consumption
I wouldn’t consider a cows udders to be breasts.
They are functionally the same.
I’m a trans woman and I recall this myth when I first learned abt trans stuff back in '06 or so. It was widely believed and shared in trans spaces that phytoestrogen could help marginally before getting access to human estrogen. Sites like Laura’s Playground (one of the largest online trans resources at the time) were filled with junk like this, along with a bunch of heteronormative and gender-essentialist takes that were super damaging. I’m glad resources are better and more prevalent now.
That was a long winded way of saying that I’m pretty sure a chunk of the culture war bs regarding soy (“soyboys”) came out of these pseudoscientific claims on trans forums, mixed with a dose of racism (wrt asian cultures that use soy in cooking).
As a farmer who’s family has grown probably 2M+ bushes of soybeans since they became popular in the 70s. I can truly say that the worst part is spending night after night with little needles injecting the Republican poison into the fattest beans.
/s - do I really need this here? Oh hell yeah!
Some might be from the cyberpunk genre. It’s crazy how many cyberpunk worlds are filled with soy-based everything and corporate conspiracy is a staple of the genre. Could easily put the two together so you have some soy-based conspiracies.
But Soylent Green is people…
How’s it taste?
Like unsalted oatmeal.
I wonder if soy taking over as farmable crop has anything to do with it. Pissed some conservative farmers off and they started rumors.
Sure, like that KFC rumor in Korea. Apparently KFC can no longer use “Chicken” in the name because they use genetically modified birds with no feathers to make processing easier.
Apparently started by Korean chicken farmers hurt by competition with commercial farming and somehow believed.by certain people
Sphinx chicken… yum…
Thats a new one.
The one I’ve always heard is that KFC using genetically engineered chickens with multiple legs and wings (and thus more breasts and thighs) to get more meat per chicken to satisfy demands.
That’s harder to believe. With the other example all you have to do is take a video of a plucked chicken and say “found one”
Never underestimate idiots who will believe anything that aligns with their preconceived notions.
Just gotta look at right wing politics and their supporters for enough proof of that.
Yes, farmers hate soybeans. And money.
If it’s conspiracy theories in general, and not just the soy thing, then I think you might be taking the wrong approach. Just trying to debunk the soy thing might prove impossible because there is some underlying cause that is making him want to believe it.
Your friend might be being radicalised. By a person he trusts, a community he is a part of, or simply by the algorithm of a website he is spending his time on. In which case, getting him to let go of the conspiracies is going to be extremely difficult, because to do so would lose him those connections.
It doesn’t sound like he’s too far gone though. Maybe reasserting healthy connections will help, and if you can try breaking his media habits.
You make a good point that people who believe these conspiracies often have an underlying reason making them want to believe. Dan Olson came to the same conclusion in his video about flat earthers which I would recommend to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.
“Flat Earthers are not otherwise-empty vessels who believe one kooky thing. They believe that thing because it suits their purposes. […] it says something they already believe about the nature of the social world. Flat Earth is a thing people want to believe because if it were true it would be irrefutable proof of everything else they believe.”
Folding Ideas, In Search of a Flat Earth ~29 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
As for the soy thing, Hbomerguy covered the topic pretty thoroughly.
I think a lot of conspiracy theorists wrestle with the fact that the world is kind of shitty and there’s not really a good reason for it to be this shitty.
Once you have that thorn in your side to deal with then you start trying to figure out why the world is so shitty.
Having a convenient enemy like the Illuminati or a conspiracy about the Earth being flat or some evil group of billionaires or leftists or whatever who have organized to make the world shittier so that their lives can be wonderful and perfect in every way is a great scapegoat for dealing with the underlying issue of “why is the world so shitty”.
And this is a pill that many people will find it impossible to swallow, but the reason why the world is so shitty is this:
We, as a group, believe the world is shitty. Therefore, we act as if we live in a shitty world. Therefore we make the world shitty.
There is no other magic sauce than that. If humanity came together and decided that they would not live in a shitty world any longer we could have the world completely and totally fixed in 12 years or less.
But we don’t do that because we believe that we live in a shitty world.
I think the problem is that no one can agree on what makes the world shitty. Some people think the rich should be taxed, some people think other people shouldn’t have equal rights. And then other people are purposely using the disagreement to get what they want. It’s a mess with no clear fix in sight.
I would like someone who isn’t afraid of being an asshole or trampling on the people who get in their way to take charge.
Someone who will move the way Trump does but who has at their core an incorruptible nobility and drive to improve every facet of life for every human on the planet.
I don’t dare hope for or expect a perfect leader but I long for a good King Richard after a lifetime of Prince Johns and sherrifs of Nottinghams.
Well, in American there was Bernie Sanders.
It’s a confounding thing, that so many people will vote for leaders who straight-up tell them that they will make the world a worse place for them (Reagan, Trump, Thatcher).
Good thing the Democrats shot themselves in the foot and gave us Trump, and now Biden who is in a dead tie with Trump still acording to most polling.
We could have had FDR 2.0
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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.
Soy makes a good target for a conspiracy theory, because it’s in everything.
This ubiquity heightens its danger: your kids are eating it, you’re eating it, the ink on your cereal box is soy, the glue in your shoes is soy… it’s all around us, man!
Secondly, being everywhere gives the appearance of an elaborate, omnipresent plot. Like Bill Gates and his microchips, the cabal wants to get their soy into you one way or another!
They eat this kind of shit up.
The fact that hippies are associated with soy milk strikes the right notes for hating soy.
The belief that soy acts like estrogen in the body and will feminize men - that hits all the right notes for hating soy.
Americans don’t give a shit that Asians have been eating and even living on soy for centuries, because they denigrate those cultures, seeing them as hive minds without individuality. That makes soy even more hatable.
So if you’re going to fall down a rabbit hole at all, this seems like a deep one.
The only possible saving grace for soy is that there are a hell of a lot of soy farmers in America. And we know conspiracy nuts live down-home regular folk like farmers. Long as they ain’t organic or nuthin.
Plus it is highly desired by Asian countries like China, they import huge amounts from Brazil, so any China paranoia gets tossed into the mix.
Crazy conspiracies have to start somewhere, he just hasn’t published his findings yet.
A fair amount is just racism.
How do you mean? I eat soy products and I’ve never had anyone mention race as a reason for avoiding soy products.
People from east and southeast Asia have been cultivating and eating soy beans as a staple food since before Babylon. I mean that literally; there is evidence of soy bean cultivation in what is now China from like 7000 BC.
It’s tough to take a phrase like, “Soy makes men weak,” as anything other than racism when it puts down a quarter of the population of the planet. At best, it’s ignorance, but in my experience the people who hold this opinion don’t change their mind when you explain this to them.
Some people are clever enough to try and say that they don’t hate Asian people, but they’ll stigmatize everything about being Asian. Soy products are associated with Asian people, so as a workaround, they can walk right up to the racism line, without jumping completely over it. It’s subtle racism.
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Lol
Yeah hating on soy beans is literally fascism. And probably transphobic as well somehow.
I don’t get you guys anymore. I feel you are so disconnected in your far leftist bubble. Most people just shake their heads and you wonder why the far right is on the rise.
And I literally just bought a big bag of soy…
Nobody makes someone alt-right except themselves.
Ok so Europe’s far right is on the rise because everyone suddenly became a hardcore Nazi. It does not have to do with illegal mass immigration leading to enormous socioeconomic problems and the left and center parties ignoring this for decades because they are afraid being immediately labeled nazi
illegal mass immigration leading to enormous socioeconomic problems
Speaking from Germany, where are those enormous socioeconomic problems created by illegal mass immigration?
Right there with the decades in which the left and center ignored this problem. Damm CDU and its woke agenda.
Hmmm, does it really make sense to say “and you wonder why the far right is on the rise” in this here position?
Of course, I wonder every single day, especially since it has affected me on a personal level as an immigrant, but do you really think the ‘wacky far left’ s behind the far right rising? Lots of leftists took it too far recently, but is that an excuse to start literal fascism? Is a normal healthy person’s response to ‘PC gone mad’ to create six alternative media websites and spout lie upon lie about immigrants then proceed to dehumanize asylum seekers? Is it an excuse for misreading statistics? Is the normal response to go to cesspools far right forums where black people are consistently called “apes” and the n word?
Hi (Waving from left bubble) !
I agree. I don’t think anyone is thinking that hard about the “Asian” roots of soybeans. And people on the left are just as hung up on their identity politics as people on the right.
There is a strong association between Tofu with hippy culture, even though there really isn’t such a thing anymore. I guess if you don’t want heart disease by the time you’re 40, you must be a hippy.
Anecdotally I am intelligent and reasonable, but when I was younger around when 9/11 happened I couldn’t wrap my head around why someone would do what they did, it was to me incomprehensible, irrational, my world view couldn’t account for what happened. In that null space conspiracy theories created plausible explanations for my young and impressionable mind to latch onto.
I soon began questioning authority in general, the nationalized narratives provided were clearly propagandized, and in that wake of dissonance real conspiracies, like the war on drugs, started to add credibility to other outlandish ones. It is intelligent to question, and even entertain that which is irrational from time to time, if not just to test the waters, so to speak.
Not defending your friend, but I think part of it is the association with highly processed foods.
I developed a soy allergy, and I was shocked to learn how much it’s restricted my diet. In two years I’ve found one brand of hot dog buns I can eat. If you you look at almost any fast food restaurants allergen menu you will see soy in almost every single item. Mayo is a effectively whipped soybean oil.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but it’s a cheap additive and seems to have some preservative quality, and a good indication that you’re food is highly processed. I eat much healthier now, largely against my will.
I once had a co-worker who passionately believed that soy was full of feminising chemicals and it was being promoted by Western civilisation’s satanic overlords to reduce our ability to resist them. He also believed that Christians are persecuted, Chinese people are cannibals and demons come from the planet Nebiru. Once he warned me that we’re supposed to believe that people who go to faith healings collapse on stage in the ecstasy of communion with the Lord - but it’s actually just the fake faith healer pushing them down with his psychic powers.
This doesn’t answer your question, does it? At least we can find solidarity in our misery.
I protest, we’re not cannibals. We only eat non-Chinese ‘people’
TIL, thank you.
Hey, we’ve all thought about it. 😉
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