Soy is for men, milk is for calfs

I often see it suggested in some dark corners of the Internet that soy is bad for men, that it feminizes them, whereas milk is for tough white men, because all the other people are lactose intolerance and can’t properly metabolize it. There’s a biological mechanisms the guys manage to come up with, the fact that soy contains high amounts of phytoestrogens, which are plant substances that can bind to human estrogen receptors. As a result, soy is supposed to turn you into a woman. In my opinion, these guys have it exactly backwards: Soy is masculinizing, but milk is feminizing.

Milk is for calfs

Let’s look at why this is. Our bodies are designed to cope with all sorts of food substances. We can process plants, we can process animal proteins and we can digest fungi. We don’t seem completely specialized for any kind of food category. Cats would go blind without access to taurine, their own bodies can’t properly synthesize it, so they need to eat meat. Gorillas can digest cellulose, but there’s no evidence humans can do this. Cows are good at processing grains because they have a rumen, so they first have bacteria process grass in their rumen, before chewing on it some more and letting the bacteria then digest the rest of it. Humans have generally not had the grain-intense diets we have today for generations, so we tend to use fermentation with bacteria and yeast to make the bread we eat.

Our intestines have evolved in a manner that allows us to be generalists. If we look at our closest surviving relatives, we see that they seek out a diet primarily composed of plant matter of various kinds. To leave the African forests behind and conquer the world however, we had to learn to adapt to a diverse variety of food sources. Any diet that seeks optimal health needs to keep in mind this simple fact, that we have evolved to be able to sustain ourselves on a broad variety of food substances. Look at the archeological record and you will find that during the Toba catastrophe our ancestors survived by eating shellfish, while most other hominids perished. In Spain, our paleolithic ancestors ate snails. On the African plains we dug for root tubers and scooped up decaying flesh from corpses before other scavengers could reach them. Eventually we also evolved into competent hunters.

There is however, one thing we ingest, which all archeological and biological evidence suggests is an evolutionary novelty. That devillish source of food, my friends, is dairy. Your body, is not designed to process dairy, because dairy is not just simply food for calfs, it is a collection of a series of nutrients and hormones that are specifically meant to enable a calf to rapidly grow up to be a healthy young cow. Feed this to human beings and we are giving birth to people whose bodies will be twisted out of proportion, because their bodies are exposed to signals that are meant for calfs rather than humans.

You might say to me that grains are also an evolutionary novelty, but grains are not an evolutionary novelty to the degree that dairy is. Archeological evidence suggest that we were processing sorghum grains with stones as long as 105,000 years ago. On the other hand, dairy is a significant innovation. It’s thought that we first learned to consume milk somewhere between 7000 and 9000 BC, in Mesopotamia. Herds of cattle allow human beings to make use of marginal lands, that would otherwise be unsuitable for human food production.

One of the delicacies we make from milk is cheese, which primarily consists of the concentred mixture of proteins and fats found in milk. It takes a lot of milk to produce cheese, so cheese should be thought of as a luxury product. The amount of cheese we eat increased enormously during the 20th century, as the invention of fertilizer and selective breeding allowed us to dramatically increase yields. In 1935, Germans consumed 3.9 kilogram of cheese per person. In 2011, they consumed 23 kilogram, with their consumption still increasing. We should all work on ending our addiction to cheese and start developing good plant-based alternatives to cheese.

In the Netherlands we have filled our grassy landscape with cows, thereby allowing us to produce a lot of food with relatively little manual labor. This system is further incentivized by the European Union, which set up a system of agricultural subsidies that created a huge incentive for milk production. The EU wants our continent to be self-sufficient in food production, while maintaing a post-industrial service economy. Food sources like dairy make a lot of sense if those are the goals you strife after.

Unfortunately, the consumption of dairy is not in our direct health interest. Everyone knows that the developed world suffers a crisis of low sperm counts among men, while girls are entering puberty at increasingly earlier ages. What might be the cause? Many people blame synthetic estrogens, leaking from plastics. Personally, I think the main cause may be dairy.

Because of “improvement” of modern dairy cows through selective breeding, these cows now continue to produce milk while they’re pregnant. Cows in the past did not produce milk while pregnant. Today, 75% of milk comes from cows who are pregnant. As a result, large amounts of hormones end up in dairy products. When humans are exposed to such milk, the excretion of estrogens in our urine increases. In men, a decrease in testosterone is seen, in women, ovulation is induced. The greatest concentration of these hormones is seen in butter. In hard cheese concentrations are comparatively low, because the hormones bind to whey proteins, rather than to the casein protein. It shouldn’t come as a shock that studies tend to find reduced fertility in men exposed to a lot of dairy.

Another hormone you’ll find in the milk of cows is Insulin-like Growth Factor 1. This is a growth hormone in milk, meant to help little calfs rapidly grow up to become cows. Ever notice how a lot of people these days suffer acne, while this seems as if it was relatively rare in the past? Well, one of the primary candidates for this epidemic is Insulin-like Growth factor 1 from dairy. A meta-analysis, a review of previous studies, found that dairy exposure, particularly milk, leads to an increase in acne. We typically tend to find that IGF-1 is higher in people with worse acne.

There are some theoretical benefits to exposing people to all of this dairy, depending on your perspective. Scandinavia and the Netherlands have the highest consumption of milk in the world. Dutch people are now the tallest people in the world, whereas we were the shortest people in Europe before the industrial revolution. This is largely caused by the increased consumption in dairy, as we’re exposing people to an overdose of growth signals meant for cattle. The question of course, is whether we’re willing to pay the price for being so tall. Is it worth suffering acne, reduced fertility and prostate cancer?

Another thing we have to examine, are the effects that galactose has on us. Galactose is found in milk, one of the two sugars that together produce lactose. Galactose is used in animals by scientists, to induce accelerated aging. It’s even used in rats to study premature failure of the ovaries. A very rich source of galactose is yoghurt. It’s suspected that the epidemic of premature ovarian failure in women today, may be caused because a subset of women are sensitive to galactose in their diet.

Overall, I think this sufficiently summarizes the case against dairy. Dairy is an evolutionary novelty, transformed into a monstrosity through the selective breeding of cows and their subsequent transformation into milk machines.

Soy is for men

What then about soy? Soy contains plant-estrogens that turn you into a beta soyboy cuck. Or so you’ve heard. Is it true? Let’s look at what the evidence suggests. Are there studies that show soy is harmful to men and do those studies withstand proper scrutiny?

Study 1

Let’s look at this study first. It found that “Serum testosterone decreased 19%(+/-22%) during the 4-week use of soy protein powder (P = 0.021) and increased within 2 weeks after we discontinued soy protein powder.” Sounds scary, but you’ll realize it’s nonsense when you look at the actual study. To start with, there’s no control group. We don’t know what else these guys went through over a period of six weeks.

More importantly, take a look at the actual graph:

We see one guy who has testosterone levels roughly three times higher than the average guy. By the end of the study, he has a normal level of testosterone. In the other guys, we notice no real effect of soy on testosterone. Filter out this one guy who looks like an outlier and you find that there’s no statistically significant detectable effect left. On the other hand, what if the soy genuinely caused the decline in his testosterone? Then it helped him move from damaging abnormally high levels of testosterone, to normal levels of testosterone. What about the guy with the lowest level of testosterone at the start of this study? His level of testosterone increased. These effects are probably mainly due to regression to the mean rather than due to soy, but it’s a Herculean effort to interpret this study as somehow illustrating harmful effects of soy.

Study 2

Another study that received a lot of attention was this study. In this study, it was found that the sperm concentration in men’s semen was lower in men who ate a lot of soy, compared to men who didn’t eat soy. So far so good. The first thing to note is the P value of 0.02, which barely qualifies as statistically significant. More important however, is for us to ask the following question: Who had the highest total sperm count in this study?  The men in the 75-90% highest category of soy consumption. The difference is caused by the fact that the men with more soy intake seemed to have greater volume.

Also important to keep in mind, is the fact that most studies done find no effect on fertility. There have been multiple attempts at replicating the findings seen here, with no success.

Study 3

The thing to understand about the phytoestrogens in soy is that they’re generally thought of as taking up the place of other estrogens. They are weak estrogens, that substitute for strong estrogens. This is generally a good thing, but the only exception may be in the brain, where estrogens serve to protect the brain against inflammation. Thus it’s been suspected that the phytoestrogens in soy might accelerate cognitive impairment in elderly.

There are some studies suggesting this. The problem of course, is that the results are a very mixed bag. You’ll find studies suggesting a link here, here, and here.

Now it’s time to look critically at these studies. The first study finds a higher risk with tofu, but a reduced risk with tempeh. If soy causes dementia in men, we’d expect to find these results in tempeh too, where we similarly find phytoestrogens. This suggests there may be an alternative explanation for the finding. Tofu may be food eaten primarily by the poor and thus be an indicator of a relatively poor diet. The second study manages to squeeze out a barely significant finding (p 0.04), of a 25% increased risk in the highest category of intake, after adjusting for various confounders. If the risk found is thus even genuine, it would appear to be minor. The third study depends on recall of how much tofu men ate decades earlier. This study doesn’t allow us to separate correlation from causation.

Finally, we have to consider that these studies have to be considered as opposed to a broad list of studies suggesting the opposite conclusion, that soy improves cognitive health. Some of these studies are found here, here  and here. The evidence to me suggests there’s no reason to worry about this.

Evidence that soy is good for men

To start with, let’s just go over the best documented evidence we have. Here’s a study that looks at fifteen placebo-controlled treatment groups and concludes there’s no effect of soy on testosterone. Look at it this way: With the abundance of research apparently done, wouldn’t we have found a link by now if there’s some genuine emasculating effect of soy on men?

In contrast, evidence would appear to suggest that soy promotes masculinization in men. The reason is quite simple. We already know what’s emasculinating for men: Synthetic estrogens and dietary estrogens from dairy. In addition to this, we know that the plant estrogens are weak estrogens. They occupy the estrogen receptor, thereby prohibiting synthetic estrogens from binding to the estrogen receptor and causing harm.

In women, we find that exposure to Bisphenol A reduces their fertility. On the other hand, if those women also eat soy, the harmful effect of Bisphenol A on their fertility is significantly reduced. Similarly, Flaxseed contains a lot of phytoestrogens, just like soy. In male rats, flaxseed protects against the harmful effects of Bisphenol A on male fertility, by preventing DNA damage. There’s a simple explanation for this that I think explains quite well how this probably happens: Your body evolved to comprehend how to metabolize substances found in plants. Bisphenol A on the other hand, is an organic form of plastic, that lingers around in those cells where it can bind to the estrogen receptor, because we never evolved to be able to properly metabolize substances like this.

But wait, it gets better! One of the phytoestrogens found in soy, is Daidzain. The male body produces testosterone, which is converted by the enzyme aromatase into estrogen, when our testosterone concentration grows very high. This is why bodybuilders often get breasts, because the steroids injected lead to the conversion of male hormones into forms of estrogen. This estrogen then prevents further testosterone secretion by the body, preventing excess testosterone from damaging the male body. On the other hand, there are substances that reduce the binding of estrogen, like the phytoestrogens mentioned earlier.

In male mice during puberty, amounts of daidzein comparable to those of men who would eat soy regularly, increase testosterone levels, increase the size of their testicles and increase the quality of their sperm. It has even been found that the two main phytoestrogens in soy, daidzein and genistein, work together synergistically to increase testosterone and sperm count in mice.

Finally, if it’s true that daidzein and genistein are so good for male fertility, we would expect to see evidence in humans too. Well, there’s a study that looked at the difference in daidzein and genistein consumption in fertile and infertile men. It found that fertile men had much higher consumption of these phytoestrogens than non-fertile men. 44.8% of the difference in fertility between men in this study was explained by difference in genistein alone.

Let’s look at some more evidence. Besides soy, flaxseed is high in phytoestrogens too. When bulls are given flaxseed, their fertility is significantly improved. In addition, in one case a man with low sperm count was given a phytoestrogen supplement, which improved his fertility and allowed him to have a child. When the treatment stopped, his fertility plunged again.

Case study number one

Here’s a case study, of 90 IQ narcissist Alex Jones. Alex Jones makes money selling his own male vitality supplements. This is what he looks like:

What do we see? A high amount of body fat, distributed in a masculine pattern, mostly around the waist and the shoulder area. Alex Jones might look big, but he merely looks big because his body has been exposed to junk food, so he looks like most Americans. A lifetime of exposure to high amounts of insulin causes his bone structure to grow big (as it does in most Americans), but he pays a price, in the form of a big belly and premature baldness, which he now tries to distract from by growing a beard. Keep in mind: This is a guy who went through the effort of designing his own male vitality supplement! There is probably nothing modern science can still do at his age to genuinely reverse the lifelong impact his mediocre American meat-heavy processed food diet has had on his body. He looks roughly ten years older than his actual age.

Case study number two

Someone went ahead and studied the Bitcoin maximalist 90 IQ beta cuck carnivore diet, then went ahead and switched to a vegan diet and spontaneously ascended into heaven where Zeus himself acknowledged him as his son. Here’s what happened:

At the end of a carnivore diet, my testosterone fell 22.5% from 21.8 nmol/L to 16.9 nmol/L. At the end of a vegan diet, this number increased by 34.9% to 22.8 nmol/L. Even more concerning than this drop to my testosterone was a spike in my LDL cholesterol. My LDL cholesterol rose from 2.68 mmol/L to 3.7 mmol/L on a carnivore diet before dropping to 1.82 mmol/L on a vegan diet. This cholesterol decrease was so dramatic that my doctor had to call me aside and ask how I did it. He said that if he prescribes a patient medication the best results that he could hope for is a 10% reduction. When switching from carnivore to vegan, my cholesterol fell over 50%.

I would personally never dare to do this, because I suspect the damage from a plant-deficient diet may be irreversible.

New definitions for the words soyboy and meatman

I propose that we come up with a new definition of the word soyboy. The word soyboy is best described as following:

An adult man with long-term adherence to a plant based diet rich in soy. Soyboys tend to have the body fat percentage, hairline, fluid intelligence, testosterone level and cardiovascular health of eighteen year olds, thereby causing people to refer to them as boys, because their bodies age at a slower pace. Soyboys will survive long enough to still be around once senolytic therapies and glucosepane crossbreakers are widely deployed. Soyboys will then become immortal, copy the complete molecular state of their brain on a database on the Internet, usher in the hedonic singularity and enter a state of hibernation on board of a spaceship as they begin colonizing Alpha Centauri.

Example usage: “Have you heard about the world’s oldest marathon runner, Fauja Singh, who broke a record at age 92?  He is a real soyboy, who has adhered to a lifelong plant-based diet. His ability to cling onto his vitality at old age through his healthy diet and lifestyle allows him to deliver a productive contribution to his community, thereby increasing the proliferation of their genes.”

I also propose that we come up with a new word, meatman. The word meatman is best described as following:

An adult man who looks ten years older than his real age. Meatmen seize a disproportionately large share of the world’s natural resources, to indulge in a diet that satisfies their most base impulses. Meatmen don’t properly pay for this share of the world’s natural resources they feel entitled to, instead they are able to indulge in this diet because of a perverse system of government subsidies that makes their unsustainable diet affordable to them. A meatman is not defined by the fact that he eats meat. He is instead defined by the fact that he eats an excessively large amount of red meat that is agreed by scientific evidence and all the world’s most reputable health agencies to have a negative impact on his overall health. Meatmen’s favorite drugs are generally cocaine and anabolic steroids. Meatmen either suddenly die at age forty from a heart attack, or live long enough to witness their arteries clog up and their toes turn gangrenous. After dying they tend to reincarnate as an animal in a factory farm.

Example usage: “Have you heard about this 90 IQ meatman, Alex Jones, who looks ten years older than he really is? He thinks he is a tough man, but he tries to destroy Joe Rogan by accusing him of racism by taking video clips out of context. When I saw how he tried to encourage a left-wing lynch mob to rise up against Joe Rogan, I thought I was looking at the behavior of a thirteen year old girl, rather than an adult man.”

My recommendation based on the evidence

As with everything, it’s the dose that makes the poison. Overall, our consumption of dairy is enormous compared to our consumption of dairy in the past. In addition to this, dairy produced today is different from dairy in the past, because the milk now comes from pregnant cows. This has numerous problematic effects, including feminization in men, an epidemic of various forms of reproductive cancers in men as well as women, excessive disproportionate growth of the limbs due to the hormones in milk as well as inflammatory acne.

In contrast, soy is good for you. I wouldn’t recommend feeding soy infant formula to babies, but I wouldn’t recommend synthetic milk to babies in general, when our own bodies are perfectly capable of delivering milk to children. For everyone else however, the evidence suggests that soy is a good addition to the diet. The best choice for soy in the diet would be one of the various forms of fermented soy that are available for purchase. My own favourite is Tempeh, but there are various forms of fermented soy available in Asian stores.

Suggestion: Whenever you plan on eating red meat, eat soy instead. Red meat reduces fertility in men. In addition, oysters are very good for men too, because they are full of zinc, which increases fertility in men.

Globally, Western civilization needs to have a radical shift in the structure of financial incentives for different forms of food production. Oyster production has positive externalities on the environment. Oyster clean the water, serve as attachment points for other organisms and have a very low carbon footprint. Beef and dairy production on the other hand cause the emission of greenhouse gasses, as well as soil erosion and water pollution. My suggestion is thus that oyster production should be subject to government subsidies to account for the healing effect that bivalves have on our environment, while beef and dairy production should see the introduction of new taxes, to account for the negative externalities imposed on our environment.