More evidence has revealed the dangers of long-term soy and phytoestrogen consumption in the animal world. Studies have found more animals have been affected by consuming these products.
As a follow-up to our massively popular article a study linking soy consumption to increased aggression and social isolation in monkeys, we’ve assembled some more studies which support the shocking claims of that study.
Even Joe Rogan picked up on our Monday article examining evidence that long-term soy consumption could make monkeys turn into aggressive loners
Soy and Phytoestrogen Consumption in the Animal World
On Monday, we reported on a largely unreported study on the effects of long-term soy consumption on the behaviour of some of our closest evolutionary cousins. The study from 2004, which can be accessed here, showed that macaque monkeys which were fed a diet of soy isoflavones over a 15-month period exhibited significant increases in aggressive and submissive behaviour, as well as drastical reductions in the time spent socialising with their fellow monkeys. In short, they became aggressive loners.
Our report seems to have struck a chord and soon Twitter was ablaze with discussion of soy monkeys and possible parallels with the behaviour of certain groups in the human world. Even Joe Rogan picked up on the report, commenting on his Instagram profile ‘This explains Twitter’. At the time of writing, the article is our most popular, and continues to rack up views.
People are talking about… aggressive soy monkeys
Our suggestions that the monkey study could have human implications was not meant to be a throw-away one, however. Although we acknowledged in the article that proving a relationship between changing social behaviour and changing diet is a tall order, it’s clear that the last 70-or-so years have seen massive changes to human lifestyles, behaviour and diets. Hypothesising links between these changes is far from absurd, even if the links are hard to prove definitively.
Processed food, for instance, a new development of the last 70 years, is coming in for increasing scrutiny, with a recent BBC documentary suggesting that the average diet of 1/5 of Britons (80% processed food) could be causing serious neurological as well as physical effects. As part of the documentary, a brave doctor conducted a self-experiment by spending a month eating that diet, before revealing his results to the world. They were not pretty.
After a month, the doctor had suffered serious weight gain, piles, anxiety, sleeplessness, loss of libido and, most shockingly of all, changes to the structure of his brain considered to be typical of drug addicts. Indeed, weeks after the experiment ended, scans revealed that the neurological changes had not been reversed. The doctor is now quite literally hard-wired to want to eat processed food.
(11) UK doctor switches to 80% ULTRA-processed food diet for 30 days ??? BBC – YouTube
Processed food is laced with vegetable oil, which we’ve described elsewhere as ‘one of the worst things you can eat’. In the US especially, the most ubiquitous form of vegetable oil in processed food is soybean oil. Soybean oil is the most widely consumed form of oil in the United States, with the 20th century witnessing a 100-fold increase in consumption.
A study from last year showed that consumption of soybean oil caused weight gain and genetic dysregulation in mice, leading to potentially serious neurological problems, including dysfunction of the oxytocin system, which helps governs empathy and bonding.
Could the massive increase in soybean oil consumption be responsible, at least in part, for the massive obesity epidemic in the US? And what about the neurological effects: could changing patterns of mental health and increasing social alienation and anxiety also be the result?
As the evidence of study after study, whether in humans or animals, piles up, it’s difficult not to ask these questions – and many are.
The issue takes on a new urgency as we are told that we must abandon altogether the foods that have sustained us and our ancestors since time immemorial, in favour of plant-based diets. We have already examined in detail scientific evidence that plant-based diets are inferior to those built around animal proteins.
Companies that are selling meat-replacement products already realise that they will not be able to convince people to switch on the basis of claims of health or taste superiority, and so they are switching to massive social pressure in an attempt to shame people into making the change. Witness the oat ‘milk’ company Oatly’s recent ‘Help Dad’ advertising campaign, for instance, for a prime example of a shame-based appeal.
(11) What have we here? (English version) | Help Dad | Oatly – YouTube
But what will the true effects of this new agricultural and dietary revolution be? For one thing, we know that the environmental picture is nowhere near as rosy as advocates claim. The physical and social effects may be even worse, especially since many of the key constituents of this new plant-based regime, and soy particularly, are phytoestrogenic.
Estrogenic chemicals, especially industrial chemicals known as xenoestrogens, have been wreaking havoc with fertility rates since the second half of the twentieth century. The American fertility expert Professor Shanna Swan has recently made the shocking claim that by 2045 half of all men could be totally infertile, with the remainder being functionally infertile (i.e. producing so few sperm they might as well be infertile). This, as much as a massive asteroid impact, ecological catastrophe or nuclear war, looks like the most plausible threat to humanity’s survival over the next century.
What good, then, will come of flooding our bodies with yet more estrogenic substances? Will it be the final nail in the coffin of mankind? At the very least we might expect further serious physical, mental and no doubt social degeneration as a result of the change to plant-based diets.
The original monkey study claims that it is the soy phytoestrogens, because of their role in mediating the aromatisation of androgens (i.e. male hormones), that cause the changes in aggression and social behaviour. In fact, although we didn’t know it at the time of writing the first report, there is at least one other study which shows similar results for another group of monkeys, this time in the wild. However wild the initial claims may have seemed, this second study seems to substantiate them clearly and in full.
He cute: a red colobus monkey
A study of red colobus monkeys was conducted over a period of eleven months in a wildlife park in Uganda. The researchers charted how the consumption of phytoestrogenic plants varied with the seasons and how the animals’ behaviour altered as a result.
‘Red colobus fed more heavily on estrogenic Millettia dura young leaves during weeks of higher rainfall, and the consumption of this estrogenic item was positively correlated to both their fecal estradiol and cortisol levels. Social behaviors were related to estradiol and cortisol levels, as well as the consumption of estrogenic plants and rainfall.’
The effects of increased consumption of phytoestrogenic plants were closely similar to those observed with the macaques in our original study.
‘The more the red colobus consumed estrogenic plants the higher their rates of aggression and copulation and the lower their time spent grooming. Our results suggest that the consumption of estrogenic plants has important implications for primate health and fitness through interactions with the endocrine system and changes in hormone levels and social behaviors.’
Our advice, if you are looking to regain your masculinity, is to avoid all forms of estrogenic food, especially soy but also beer; hops contain one of the most potent phytoestrogens known to man. You should also download our new FREE ebook on testosterone – available here – and begin to implement the easy practical advice we give in it. Not just your masculinity, but the fate of mankind, could depend on it.
And despite pushes to switch consumers over to plant-based animal product replacements, studies have discovered that social pressure — rather than “evidence” — is the most effective tool to convert former meat eaters.
A recent survey discovered that the majority of men would rather die early than give up meat.
If you need more convincing as to why you should avoid phytoestrogens, check out our article presenting 4 reasons.
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