The plant-based foods industry should make low-phytoestrogen soy products.
Soy is an excellent plant-based protein. It’s also a source of the phytoestrogen isoflavone, which men online are concerned has feminizing properties (cf. soy boy). I think the effect of isoflavones is low for moderate consumption (e.g., one 3.5 oz block of tofu per day), but could be significant if the average American were to replace the majority of their meat consumption with soy-based products.
Fortunately, isoflavones in soy don’t have to be an issue. Low-isoflavone products are around, but they’re not labeled as such. I think it would be a major win for animal welfare if the plant-based foods industry could transition soy-based products to low-isoflavone and execute a successful marketing campaign to quell concerns about phytoestrogens (without denigrating higher-isoflavone soy products).
More speculatively, soy growers could breed or bioengineer soy to be low in isoflavones, like other legumes. One model for this development would be how normal lupin beans have bitter, toxic alkaloids and need days of soaking. But in the 1960s, Australian sweet lupins were bred with dramatically lower alkaloid content and are essentially ready to eat.
Isoflavone content varies dramatically depending on the processing and growing conditions. This chart from Examine shows that 100 g of tofu can have anywhere from 3 to 142 mg of isoflavones, and 100 mg soy protein isolate can have 46 to 200 mg of isoflavones.
“but could be significant if the average American were to replace the majority of their meat consumption with soy-based products.”
Could you elaborate how you conclude that the effects of soy isoflavones could be significant if consumption were higher?
I read this summary article from the Linus Pauling institute a while ago and concluded, “okay, isoflavones don’t seem like an issue at all, and in some cases might have health benefits” (and this matches my experience so far).[1] The relevant section from the article:
Male reproductive health
Claims that soy food/isoflavone consumption can have adverse effects on male reproductive function, including feminization, erectile dysfunction, and infertility, are primarily based on animal studies and case reports(181). Exposure to isoflavones (including at levels above typical Asian dietary intakes) has not been shown to affect either the concentrations of estrogen and testosterone, or the quality of sperm and semen (181, 182). Thorough reviews of the literature found no basis for concern but emphasized the need for long-term, large scale comprehensive human studies (181, 183).
Unless there is some new piece of information that fairly moderately/strongly suggests that isoflavones do have feminizing effects, this seems like a non-issue.
A personal anecdote, not that it bears much weight, I have been consuming >15 ounces of tofu and >250 ml of soy milk nearly every day for the last four years, and I have noticed how “feminine” or “masculine” my body looks is almost entirely dependent on how much weight I lift in a week and my nutritional intake, rather than my soy intake.
I’m personally not super concerned about them either but I think the cultural connotations about soy being feminizing might be deep enough that many people won’t be swayed and would rather not have to think about it if there was an option not to. Many people are understandably sensitive about physical effects of dietary changes and especially so for anything which has to do with the endocrine system and doubly so for the endocrine system with respect to sex hormones.
(Full disclosure here: a potential source of personal bias here is having been screwed over by something where the folk wisdom concern about something turned out to be true as opposed to the what many more well-respected health opinions online told me.)
I think it would be a major win for animal welfare if the plant-based foods industry could transition soy-based products to low-isoflavone and execute a successful marketing campaign to quell concerns about phytoestrogens (without denigrating higher-isoflavone soy products).
I think it would be really hard (maybe even practically impossible) to market isoflavone-reduced products without hurting demand for non-isoflavone-reduced products as a side effect.
If the plant-based food industry started producing and marketing isoflavone-reduced soy products, I am quite confident that it would counterfactually lower total demand for soy products in the short term, and I am very uncertain about the sign of impact over the long term.
Do you think this would still occur in a parallel strategy where you simply sell both high-isoflavone and low-isoflavone options without marketing the low-isoflavone option explicitly? Word of mouth could work for exposure and if it did make someone who was otherwise unconcerned about isoflavones become concerned they could simply switch over to the low-isoflavone option?
The plant-based foods industry should make low-phytoestrogen soy products.
Soy is an excellent plant-based protein. It’s also a source of the phytoestrogen isoflavone, which men online are concerned has feminizing properties (cf. soy boy). I think the effect of isoflavones is low for moderate consumption (e.g., one 3.5 oz block of tofu per day), but could be significant if the average American were to replace the majority of their meat consumption with soy-based products.
Fortunately, isoflavones in soy don’t have to be an issue. Low-isoflavone products are around, but they’re not labeled as such. I think it would be a major win for animal welfare if the plant-based foods industry could transition soy-based products to low-isoflavone and execute a successful marketing campaign to quell concerns about phytoestrogens (without denigrating higher-isoflavone soy products).
More speculatively, soy growers could breed or bioengineer soy to be low in isoflavones, like other legumes. One model for this development would be how normal lupin beans have bitter, toxic alkaloids and need days of soaking. But in the 1960s, Australian sweet lupins were bred with dramatically lower alkaloid content and are essentially ready to eat.
Isoflavone content varies dramatically depending on the processing and growing conditions. This chart from Examine shows that 100 g of tofu can have anywhere from 3 to 142 mg of isoflavones, and 100 mg soy protein isolate can have 46 to 200 mg of isoflavones.
Could you elaborate how you conclude that the effects of soy isoflavones could be significant if consumption were higher?
I read this summary article from the Linus Pauling institute a while ago and concluded, “okay, isoflavones don’t seem like an issue at all, and in some cases might have health benefits” (and this matches my experience so far).[1] The relevant section from the article:
Unless there is some new piece of information that fairly moderately/strongly suggests that isoflavones do have feminizing effects, this seems like a non-issue.
A personal anecdote, not that it bears much weight, I have been consuming >15 ounces of tofu and >250 ml of soy milk nearly every day for the last four years, and I have noticed how “feminine” or “masculine” my body looks is almost entirely dependent on how much weight I lift in a week and my nutritional intake, rather than my soy intake.
I’m personally not super concerned about them either but I think the cultural connotations about soy being feminizing might be deep enough that many people won’t be swayed and would rather not have to think about it if there was an option not to. Many people are understandably sensitive about physical effects of dietary changes and especially so for anything which has to do with the endocrine system and doubly so for the endocrine system with respect to sex hormones.
(Full disclosure here: a potential source of personal bias here is having been screwed over by something where the folk wisdom concern about something turned out to be true as opposed to the what many more well-respected health opinions online told me.)
I think it would be really hard (maybe even practically impossible) to market isoflavone-reduced products without hurting demand for non-isoflavone-reduced products as a side effect.
If the plant-based food industry started producing and marketing isoflavone-reduced soy products, I am quite confident that it would counterfactually lower total demand for soy products in the short term, and I am very uncertain about the sign of impact over the long term.
Do you think this would still occur in a parallel strategy where you simply sell both high-isoflavone and low-isoflavone options without marketing the low-isoflavone option explicitly? Word of mouth could work for exposure and if it did make someone who was otherwise unconcerned about isoflavones become concerned they could simply switch over to the low-isoflavone option?
Probably not, or to a much lesser extent.