We’ve not read “The China Study” yet, but we will definitely put it on our reading list. We’re slowly working on rescheduling our weeks to that, every now and then, we can fit a “bonus episode” into our week, and we’ll be using those episodes to review books and whatnot. We always need to expand our reading list.

Besides…my list is down to The Skeptical Environmentalist, which is a weighty book that also has a 248-page rebuttal available for download online, so if I want to read such a book with a balanced perspective, we’re talking about making it 150% longer! Anything that helps me procrastinate on that task is a good thing.

I wanted to ask if you have read a book called “The China Study”, by Dr. Colin Campbell. It was an extremely eye-opening book that precipitated our move to a vegan diet. (Which fit right in with our recent “greening”.) It is “the most comprehensive nutritional study ever conducted”, and the information was life-changing. I have a hard time giving a good description, of it because it contained so much information, and had such a far-reaching impact. I’ll shut up now so I don’t sound preachy, but I’ll say that after reading that book, I wanted all my loved ones to read it–just to be able to make informed decisions about their diet. I’ll also note that I am a born skeptic, especially when it comes to scientific study–I know how results can be skewed one direction or another, and easily misinterpreted. So…thank you for listening to my rant, and if you have time, there’s it’s really worth your while to look into that book!

(oh, and thanks Gene, for that info on canned food! aagh! I’m also a nursing mother, and feeding two young boys, too! I guess it’s really worth doing the dried beans from now on…)

Keep up the great work, guys! I’m off to listen to episode 3!

Amy Wagner

I personally eat more like you are describing (largely vegan/vegetarian), but making a small change like ‘veggie night’ in a familys weekly menu would be a great (and easy) thing for most folks to do. Its actually where I think a lot of pro-vegan/vegetarian organizations have it all wrong – target a change you can achieve – like veggie night, not elimination of all meat consumption for everyone. People are going to eat meat – but they should eat it intelligently and in moderation.

And you’re right, it’s a huge issue. There is so much focus on oil consumption, but there’s fear of touching the meat issue. We all need to spread the word!

Amy

Anyway, the isoflavone in soy is a rather controversial topic. There is no scientific concensus one way or the other at this point. Some people believe isoflavone is harmless. Some think it may create conditions in the body that encourage cancer. Others think that isoflavone helps the body regulate hormone production and can protect the body against cancers linked to estrogen such as breast cancer. It sounds like your chiropractor is in the anti-isoflavone camp.

My personal perspective is that isoflavone probably does not have strong effects one way or the other if it’s not consumed heavily. Isoflavone shows up in a number of different legumes, including garbanzo bean, fava bean, and peanut. So, there’s isoflavone in hummus and peanut butter, too. Tofu and other soy products have been traditional foods for a long time and are eaten commonly in many cultures that don’t show particularly high rates of cancers that the anti-isoflavone camp cite. Many of the isoflavone studies I’ve read have used some sort of concentrated isoflavone, such as a supplement pill, which contains more of the hormone than you’re going to get if you consume soy in moderation.

These days, nutritional advice abounds. We’ve learned the art of picking apart a whole food, such as soy milk or tofu, isolate a handful of chemicals in it, and declare the food good or bad based on what we think of these chemicals. It’s important to put this information back in context. A small component such as a food’s isoflavone content, antioxidant content, or glycemic index is really a nutritional addendum to the more broad and important questions of the calorie content of the food, its protein level, its bulk, etc.

I say enjoy your soy, but be wary of dietary supplements that are selling isoflavone.

Thanks for that very useful site on the canned goods. Scary stuff! Here we’ve been using canned and dried beans, but I think that we’ll move entirely over to dried now. I think that canning and other food preservation strategies are good, but perhaps that will have to be a DIY as well.

Amy

Thanks so much for the kind words and support! Part of making this video project is to hopefully not lose the magic. It’s easier to stay “on the wagon” when we have such great supporters urging us on and joining us. We really hope that this blog will grow with us.

We are planning a number of DIY episodes. Making your own food is, of course, infinitely more sustainable. I love to cook and I love making my own staples. Tofu is one that we haven’t had much luck with yet. I know that it’s basically a process of just curdling soy milk, but we can’t buy soy milk in sufficient bulk to overcome the cost of packaging. If we had access to soybeans, we could do it ourselves. The only soybeans we see for sale are either roasted soy nuts or edamame. The latter are expensive beyond belief…can the former be used for soy milk and tofu? This is really something we would like to know more about.