ALS
Member
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2017
- Messages
- 205
I lived in Japan from the late 80's to the later 90's. When I got back to the US, I saw a lot of misinformation in the hopes of selling more soy products to females in general to stave off the threat of breast cancer, which had grown to epidemic proportions in the US. The myth was Japanese women didn't get breast cancer (hardly at all) because they consumed a lot of soy. So the front men for the soy industry were saying.
What the corporate media overlooked in its zeal to sell Americans on the so called anti cancer benefits of soy, is that in Japan, birth control pills and other hormonal birth control methods were never legalized or available in Japan. The main methods of birth control were either abstinence, condoms or spermicides.
Birth control pills have been available in the US since the 1960's. Women in the US were not dropping dead left and right from breast cancer until a couple decades later, which is probably those estrogenic chickens coming home to roost.
When I took a trip to Hong Kong in 1988, I went into a Watson's Pharmacy and found birth control pills being sold OTC on a rack in the store. No Rx needed. The rest of Asia was different in terms of what was allowed.
The amount of soy consumed in Japan was simply guessed at by the 'researchers' who were apparently working for the soy industry.
They do consume soy sauce the most, but that is fermented and I don't believe it has the phyto estrogens of tofu. Tofu is consumed but hardly in public. In fact, I rarely saw it except in low rent hole in the wall 'greasy spoon' type places, under the guise of Mabo Tofu, which is some sort of Chinese chili mac except with tofu instead of macaroni.
Boiled soy beans are a bar snack and you get about 6-8 pods. Kind of like peanuts here, but still not super common. In any case, not consumed by the bag as vegans in the US tend to do. Once in a while, a bar will have a small block of tofu as a side dish, but I only saw this once.
The Japanese diet has a fair amount of deep fried items, not just tempura, but many others. Deep fat fryers have been a main cause of house fires there. The very popular curry rice dishes are made with PUFA.
Rice is a big staple, and is stored with talc to keep it from getting wet and therefore spoiling. This is washed off during the
preparation, however, it cannot be all gotten rid of. There is some speculation that the talc is to blame for the astronomical number of cases of stomach cancer, both in Japan and also Korea as it is an irritant.
Japanese are not big consumers of dairy and the soil is low in calcium apparently because a lot of it is volcanic in origin (I'm not completely sure, but I did hear this). Japanese seem to have less robust bone structure than say, Koreans who seem to consume more dairy. Just an observation that I can't back up, but appears to me to be the case. Japanese will eat tiny fish snacks and other fish that has small bones in it, will consume the fish head as broth, I think this might make for some of the calcium intake.
What the corporate media overlooked in its zeal to sell Americans on the so called anti cancer benefits of soy, is that in Japan, birth control pills and other hormonal birth control methods were never legalized or available in Japan. The main methods of birth control were either abstinence, condoms or spermicides.
Birth control pills have been available in the US since the 1960's. Women in the US were not dropping dead left and right from breast cancer until a couple decades later, which is probably those estrogenic chickens coming home to roost.
When I took a trip to Hong Kong in 1988, I went into a Watson's Pharmacy and found birth control pills being sold OTC on a rack in the store. No Rx needed. The rest of Asia was different in terms of what was allowed.
The amount of soy consumed in Japan was simply guessed at by the 'researchers' who were apparently working for the soy industry.
They do consume soy sauce the most, but that is fermented and I don't believe it has the phyto estrogens of tofu. Tofu is consumed but hardly in public. In fact, I rarely saw it except in low rent hole in the wall 'greasy spoon' type places, under the guise of Mabo Tofu, which is some sort of Chinese chili mac except with tofu instead of macaroni.
Boiled soy beans are a bar snack and you get about 6-8 pods. Kind of like peanuts here, but still not super common. In any case, not consumed by the bag as vegans in the US tend to do. Once in a while, a bar will have a small block of tofu as a side dish, but I only saw this once.
The Japanese diet has a fair amount of deep fried items, not just tempura, but many others. Deep fat fryers have been a main cause of house fires there. The very popular curry rice dishes are made with PUFA.
Rice is a big staple, and is stored with talc to keep it from getting wet and therefore spoiling. This is washed off during the
preparation, however, it cannot be all gotten rid of. There is some speculation that the talc is to blame for the astronomical number of cases of stomach cancer, both in Japan and also Korea as it is an irritant.
Japanese are not big consumers of dairy and the soil is low in calcium apparently because a lot of it is volcanic in origin (I'm not completely sure, but I did hear this). Japanese seem to have less robust bone structure than say, Koreans who seem to consume more dairy. Just an observation that I can't back up, but appears to me to be the case. Japanese will eat tiny fish snacks and other fish that has small bones in it, will consume the fish head as broth, I think this might make for some of the calcium intake.
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