Is Soy Bad For You?
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By: Mark Sisson
The Primal Blueprint classically recommends against legume consumption, but that stance has softened. Legumes aren’t bad in and of themselves. Many people have intolerance issues with them, and unresolved gut barrier leakiness or FODMAP intolerances can make legumes a painful, often cacaphonous indulgence. But the category of legume itself is not a simple thing. Some legumes are better than others. Some people will tolerate one legume but not another. So where does soy fit in?
Is Soy Bad for You?
Well, there are a lot of foods that fall under “soy.” There’s soybean oil, soy protein, soy milk. There’s natto, tempeh, soy sauce. There’s the whole young soybean steamed. There’s the dried soybean cooked like a common bean. Anyway, let’s get on with things and analyze all the soy products available.
Soybean Oil
Soybean oil might be the single biggest impediment to human health in the modern world. Over the past century, our consumption of soybean oil has skyrocketed and the proportion of linoleic acid in human body fat has also risen. Seeing as how the absolute amount of body fat has increased as well, we’re looking at a huge rise in absolute amounts of linoleic acid in the human body. Body fat isn’t inert. It’s a legitimate endocrine hormone, and the type of fat you store on your body can determine your hormonal output and metabolic health.
This rise in soybean oil-induced linoleic-rich body fat has paralleled the increases in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and all the other degenerative maladies of modernity you see walking around in everyday life.
Soybean oil isn’t “meant” to be consumed because it wouldn’t even exist as a product without industrial extraction methods. You can’t press a soybean and get extra virgin soybean oil. You need solvents and industrial-scale equipment to make soybean oil. This alone is a good indicator that we should not be eating it. And then there are the studies that confirm we shouldn’t:
Soybean oil has low oxidative stability—heat damages it rather quickly and easily.
Soybean oil-based infant formulas are among the worst, producing poor metabolic and growth outcomes.
Soybean oil combined with dietary cholesterol damages the liver. Lard combined with dietary cholesterol does not.
The stuff is awful. Avoid.
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