Re: On non sequiturs

Charles wrote:
.  So when
> we do things like make homemade pizza he says....  "No want pizza!
> Want tofu!"

You are ruining that poor boy! Not eating real pizza is downright
un-American! Tofu....sheesh.... *grumble*.... there's studies showing that
crap ain't all it's made out to be either, you know.....

"Tofu Shrinks Brain!" Not a science fiction scenario, this sobering soybean
revelation is for real. But how did the "poster bean" of the '90s go wrong?
Apparently, in many ways -- none of which bode well for the brain.

In a major ongoing study involving 3,734 elderly Japanese-American men,
those who ate the most tofu during midlife had up to 2.4 times the risk of
later developing Alzheimer's disease. As part of the three-decade long
Honolulu-Asia Aging Study, 27 foods and drinks were correlated with
participants' health. Men who consumed tofu at least twice weekly had more
cognitive impairment, compared with those who rarely or never ate the
soybean curd. [1,2]

"The test results were about equivalent to what they would have been if they
were five years older," said lead researcher Dr. Lon R. White from the
Hawaii Center for Health Research. For the guys who ate no tofu, however,
they tested as though they were five years younger.

What's more, higher midlife tofu consumption was also associated with low
brain weight. Brain atrophy was assessed in 574 men using MRI results and in
290 men using autopsy information. Shrinkage occurs naturally with age, but
for the men who had consumed more tofu, White said "their brains seemed to
be showing an exaggeration of the usual patterns we see in aging."

and:

Concerns About Giving Soy to Infants

The most serious problem with soy may be its use in infant formulas. "The
amount of phytoestrogens that are in a day's worth of soy infant formula
equals 5 birth control pills," says Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., president of the
Maryland Nutritionists Association. She and other nutrition experts believe
that infant exposure to high amounts of phytoestrogens is associated with
early puberty in girls and retarded physical maturation in boys. [5]

A study reported in the British medical journal Lancet found that the "daily
exposure of infants to isoflavones in soy infant-formulas is 6-11 fold
higher on a bodyweight basis than the dose that has hormonal effects in
adults consuming soy foods." (A dose, equivalent to two glasses of soy milk
per day, that was enough to change menstrual patterns in women. [6]) In the
blood of infants tested, concentrations of isoflavones were 13000-22000
times higher than natural estrogen concentrations in early life. [7]