Death By Supermarket (10 page)

Clearly, there are innumerable independently operating moving parts that buoy the activities of these industries. Not everyone involved is corrupt. Some people in government and industry are simply trying to make a living at their careers. And many Americans—including elected and appointed officials—still have a “better living through chemistry” mentality. We can only assume that at least some of our elected and appointed officials and their families are as much in the dark as we are. If they knew the facts about our food supply one can only hope that our elected and appointed officials would revise their current diversionary strategy of health-care reform to shift the primary focus instead to reforming the food supply that is causing so many people to need health care in the first place.

Industries have gained a powerful foothold in America because of the efforts of a relative handful of very wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, self-interested inside players, their paid-off henchpeople, and agencies such as the FDA, as well as the unwitting participation of millions of bit players and trusting consumers. So we can’t really say that this is a conspiracy—except insomuch as it is a conspiracy to protect shareholder profits. Nevertheless, the end results (our epidemic of obesity and disease) are just as horrendous as if these contributing players had reconnoitered in a back room and agreed, “Let’s get rich at the expense of Americans’ health.”

Corporations are able to market injurious substances like MSG and aspartame to Americans because of FDA approval. For example, the public is continually assured by the FDA that aspartame is an inert compound that does not affect physiological systems.

It might be useful to take the FDA’s stance on aspartame in the context of its overall mentality about dangerous substances. A landmark study by
the Institute of Medicine called “To Err Is Human” found that as many as 98,000 Americans die every year from preventable medical errors, and that is now thought to be a conservative number. Every year more than 700,000 Americans are killed from medical mistakes, including adverse reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medicines. In addition, 2.2 million are seriously injured. These are only the numbers that are reported to the FDA of people having in-hospital adverse reactions; the FDA estimates that only 1 to 10 percent of these incidences are reported.
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Is it any wonder that the FDA is not bothered that aspartame is one of two additives that have consistently generated the most consumer complaints of adverse reactions?
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However, given the mountains of empirical evidence and hundreds of peer-reviewed research studies that demonstrate the dangers of aspartame use, it appears that the FDA approval of aspartame may have been premature. Dr. Blaylock told me that the FDA handling of aspartame “is what one would expect of a federal regulatory agency. They have ignored all studies and complaints.”
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Because it’s no secret that factory food is a primary cause of many of our obesity and health problems, many stalwart Americans are turning to “health food.” Instead of supplying us with real, organic food, factory-food makers have flooded the market with pretend “health food,” like meat “analogs”—fake meat products made from soy. It may come as a shock, but everyone is not as “go soy go” as you may have been led to believe.

PART FOUR
Science-Fiction Food

WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN,
in 1966, my family packed up and moved to a Navy base in Japan. Only twenty years after World War II, Japan was still a developing country. Kimono-swathed Japanese shuffled along on
geta
. Homes were made of rice paper and tatami mats. There was no such thing as fast food. I learned to navigate the train system to better eat my way across Japan in soba shops and sushi bars. Never once did I see a single Japanese sit down to a meal of soy. It’s true that, along with their traditional diet, the Japanese ate a number of soy foods. But mostly I remember Japanese chopsticking teeny pieces of condiment-soy out of their soup.

Flash forward to the 1990s. All of a sudden soy hits the scene. Medical experts say that eating soy protein reduces your risk for heart disease by lowering cholesterol levels, the isoflavones in soy reduce or alleviate hot flashes in menopausal women, the isoflavones in soy prevent osteoporosis, and numerous components in soy have anticancer properties. A clever PR campaign by the soy industry massaged this message into the brains of busy Americans as, “Asians are healthier because they eat soy, soy, soy, and more soy.” And I’m thinking,
Hmmm. Call me crazy, but that’s not my recollection of the Japanese diet
.

Did those involved in soy have our best interest in mind when they introduced new, industrially processed soy foods into our food chain? Or
could it be that behemoth purveyors of scary substances, like Monsanto—which produced Agent Orange for the Vietnam war and is now sunnily saturating Earth with the herbicide Round Up—those types of companies might have planted the planet with soybeans and now they’ve got to convince you to brush your teeth with it?

Since we’re inundated with soy propaganda, it may come as a surprise to you that not everyone is upbeat about it. I can’t say that I was entirely objective about soy as I launched my investigation. My biases were formed based on these five facts: One, I had lived in Japan and didn’t witness evidence to back up the claims that the historical Asian diet was heavily weighted in soy. Two, Americans don’t eat whole soy foods as Asians do; rather, they eat factory foods containing industrially processed soy. Three, 80 percent of these soy products are made from “Roundup Ready” soybeans created by Monsanto (soybeans genetically engineered to withstand the spraying of the weed and grass killer Roundup.) Four, the FDA, which has given its blessing to soy, appears to be inept and corrupt. And five, big businesses are notoriously more interested in shareholder profits than Americans’ health. Nevertheless, my motivation was to get to the truth about soy.

The pro-soy camp comprises the soy industry, the food processing industry, some vegetarians and vegans, the powerful contingency of administrators at the FDA, soy researchers whose research is funded by the soy industry, and celebrities and celebrity doctors who endorse products and/or have written books endorsing soy as a health food.

To get a well-respected opinion from the soy supporters, I began by emailing Christiane Northrup, M.D., celebrity women’s doctor and author of
The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing During the Change
, who at that time was a spokesperson for Revival, a company that manufactures high-isoflavone soy protein powders, energy bars, and other soy products. Dr. Northrup replied, “The health benefits are very well documented … [Soy] helps support nearly the entire body and its systems, including hormone regulation, breast health, the heart, the bones, the brain, and the colon and bowels.” She went on to explain in how soy relieves menopausal symptoms.
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For a second opinion, I turned to Bradley J. Willcox, M.D., M.Sc., co-investigator of the Okinawa Centenarian Study and coauthor of
The Okinawa Program: How the World’s Longest-Lived People Achieve Everlasting Health—and How You Can Too
. Dr. Willcox emailed me his opinion. “The best evidence suggests that adding more soy foods to the Western diet may reduce the risk of heart disease through beneficial effects of soy on cholesterol levels and artery health … Our studies suggest that soy may have contributed to [the Okinawan population’s] overall health and that it may be implicated in their low risk for heart disease and hormone-associated cancers such as breast, prostate, and colon cancers.”
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I looked to integrative medicine advocate and celebrity author Andrew Weil, M.D., whose word is gospel to many Americans, and he was also pro-soy, referring to the questioning of the safety of soy as “Internet paranoia.”
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It all sounded convincing. But I decided to look into the anti-soy group. As it turned out, clinical nutritionist and soy expert Kaayla T. Daniel, Ph.D., C.C.N., had very different experiences with her soy-consuming patients. She told me, “About ten years ago I started reading newspaper and magazine articles with titles like ‘The Joy of Soy’ and ‘Soy of Cooking,’ but the hype didn’t correspond with reality. I knew many vegetarians and vegans, most of whom were eating soy as their primary protein source, but very few of them looked healthy, and many complained about fatigue, brain fog, poor skin, hair loss, and other problems. Also, as a health educator I worked with people privately and in classes. I couldn’t help but notice that many of the most health-conscious people ate and drank a lot of soy and were developing many health problems, particularly thyroid problems. This piqued my interest. If soy was so healthy, why were these people doing so poorly?”

Daniel’s curiosity instigated four years of research that culminated in the book
The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food
. Dr. Daniel told me, “The health benefits of soy are not well documented. The studies are inconsistent and contradictory at best. Possible benefits are outweighed by proven risks. Hundreds of epidemiological,
clinical, and laboratory studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive distress, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders, immune system breakdown, and even heart disease and cancer.”
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Dr. Daniel didn’t agree with Dr. Willcox. “The authors of
The Okinawa Program
claim that soy was the key to lowered cancer risk in Okinawans, but a careful reading of the text indicates that they came to that conclusion based on three possibly unrelated factors: the presence of some soy in the Okinawan diet, the lower incidence of cancer there, and the pro-soy findings from several unrelated but well-publicized studies, most of which were funded by the soy industry.”
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Agreeing with Dr. Daniel are a number of scientists from the FDA laboratories of toxicological research whose research findings on soy have been ignored by the consumer protection division of the FDA; scientists whose research is not funded by the soy industry; scientists who are funded by the soy industry but whose findings get buried; clinical nutritionists and other nutritional experts; doctors of Chinese medicine; and authors of alternative health and wellness books; not to mention the unhappy ex-soy consumers who attribute health problems to eating soy, everything from weight gain to birth defects.
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Soy entered our radar screen in the early 1990s, but wasn’t officially launched into our collective consciousness until almost a decade later. In response to a petition submitted to the FDA by Protein Technologies International on October 26, 1999, the FDA issued a press release: “FDA’s conclusion is that foods containing soy protein included in a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of CHD by lowering blood cholesterol levels.” This claim was supposedly based on “evidence that including soy protein in a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may also help to reduce the risk of CHD,” and on the statement that “scientific studies show that 25 grams of soy protein daily in the diet is needed to show a significant cholesterol-lowering effect. In order to qualify for this health claim, a food must contain at least 6.25 grams of soy protein per serving.”

This authorization had been fought by two FDA toxicologists, Daniel
Sheehan, Ph.D., and Daniel Doerge, Ph.D., who were concerned about the inconclusiveness of the alleged cholesterol-lowering effect and also about known health hazards. On February 18, 1999, Drs. Sheehan and Doerge wrote a protest letter to the FDA, saying, “There exists a significant body of animal data that demonstrates goitrogenic [thyroid inhibiting] and even carcinogenic effects of soy products. Moreover, there are significant reports of goitrogenic effects from soy consumption in human infants and adults.”
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Nevertheless, the FDA ruling urged consumers to eat soy: “Because soy protein can be added to a variety of foods, it is possible for consumers to eat foods containing soy protein at all three meals and for snacks.”
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As if Americans need to hear “MORE IS MORE,” the factory-food industry aggressively proceeded to scream, “MORE IS MORE,” as they blasted soy into the marketplace. A boisterously enthusiastic press initially spurred on a wholehearted, blanket acceptance of the health benefits of soy, and vegetarians, vegans, menopausal women, eaters of low carb factory-food products, mothers of infants, and those at risk for heart disease fell into step with the multibillion-dollar-a-year soy industry.

The pharmaceutical and supplement industries quickly followed with marketing campaigns for soy isoflavone supplements. Isoflavones are a type of phytoestrogen, which are plant compounds that have estrogen-like effects and are believed to have both estrogenic and antiestrogenic capabilities. In other words, they are thought to both fit into to the estrogen receptor sites and block estrogen receptors. Phytoestrogens can either inhibit or stimulate the growth of certain cells.