They've also eaten soy for much longer than others, literally thousands of years(1) at this point. That's more than long enough to evolve countermeasures if it did have an effect. They also eat soy differently, mainly in products which are fermented.
I think a lot of it comes down to how it's processed... fermentation probably made it safer to consume over time.
I think the aversion to dietary fat for the past 3 generations combined with refined seed/bean oils has been hugely detrimental to human health as well. Not to mention, even with reductions, we still consume a massive amount of sugar per capita compared to pre-wwii levels.
It’s crazy isn’t it. So many foods they market as ‘low fat’ they just took out the good fat and replaced it with sugar- which your body immediately turns into fat anyway, and messes up your hormones and insulin sensitivity along the way.
And the only oil we’ve introduced into the diet is trans fat which the body mistakes for good fat and just starts building stuff with it, and then it all breaks down and you get heart disease.
And the worst thing is, as we've learned from Big Tobacco, They're -never- going to admit it. Nestle, Kraft, etc. will stop at nothing to make sure they aren't liable for the way they cut costs at the expense of generations of human beings health.
They're definitely bad actors, but the whole thing is/was much bigger than just packaged food companies. National medical authorities. Your local doctor or nutritionist. The food pyramid hanging in your classroom.
We're not good at mea culpas and the baggage hangs around.
Refined seed oils are synthetic chemicals that just happen to use seeds as a feedstock in a relatively novel chemical reaction.
Yes one can quibble that cooking is a chemical reaction, but it’s one that is both simple and that we’re long since evolved to tolerate.
I stick to mechanically produced vegetable oils and animal fats. It’s not only healthier but it tastes better too.
However, a healthy diet depends a great deal on your race. A traditional Inuit diet is observably healthy for Inuit persons, but probably best avoided by people like me. However there are no humans that are evolved to eat seed oils.
> However there are no humans that are evolved to eat seed oils.
I am cautious about these sorts of issues and typically buy the least processed oils (and foods in general) that I can find, however it is my understanding that humans around the world have been producing and eating (mechanically expressed) sesame seed oil for thousands of years. I can't say whether that has any impact on whether people are "evolved to eat it", but it's certainly not something new: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02859136
There isn't any "chemically extracted" seed oil, at least not with a chemical reaction. The use of a chemical reaction is indicated by "interesterified" or "hydrogenated". That isn't used for extraction; it alters the melting points.
The use of solvents to extract oils isn't a chemical reaction. It's not really different from using CO2 to extract caffeine from coffee, using water to extract tea from tea leaves, or using alcohol to extract vanilla flavor from vanilla beans. The common solvent for oil extraction is hexane, which is removed by boiling it off with a vacuum and/or heat.
The solvent-extracted oil will have unmodified molecules. The proportions of the various molecules may differ because the ease with which they are extracted will depend on the processing conditions. You get different proportions of molecules in the mix if you change the temperature, pressure, time, or solvent. For some use cases you might prefer one mix or another. You could get a different viscosity, melting point, or smoke point.
One does not need 1000 years to evolve. One generation where soy intolerance leads to death through famine/malnutrition is enough. That is why cultural differences are so important to take into account.
Asians are probably eating less GMO soy (than Americans) and we don't really know what those genetic modifications do in terms of human health. They are typically made to improve profit in some fashion, not to improve human health.
> They are typically made to improve profit in some fashion, not to improve human health.
The main goals of GMOs are to increase yield and protect against disease / pests, which is practically the same goal we've had for thousands of years of crop domestication. Take for instance wild pre-domesticated maize vs present day non-GMO maize[1] and you'll see what "natural" crop selection does. Not only do we select for strains that are healthier and with more defenses, we also select strains that give us more bang for buck. Over the years, we've also selected for: texture, size, adaptability to different climates and soil compositions, lower concentration of toxic compounds, etc. Cassava and potatoes, for instance, can be deadly in their "natural" variety, and needed some "help" to get to the varieties we eat today. GMOs are simply the result of applying modern science in combination with what we've learnt from different cultures over thousands of years, to speed this process and hopefully prevent famine and starvation.
I'm not saying all GMOs are good for you, but I just wanted to counter this idea that we don't know what effects GMOs have on us -- we've been eating GMOs for millenia. Edit: I should also strain that I fully support questioning GMOs and holding them to a high standard as a society, especially when the modifications are made for reasons which are to a high degree simply for profit. One example of that would be crops that are engineered to be infertile / yield no seeds.
PS: I'm more concerned about chemical pesticides, especially in the scale at which they're used. Microplastics, heavy metals, soil depletion, etc. Many modern agricultural practices are not good for the environment, objectively speaking. But I wouldn't just blindly lump GMO in the same group just because it's also modern.
That's a little like saying "There's zero difference between traditional animal husbandry and cloning."
Sorry, I think there is a meaningful distinction between traditional human intervention in plant varieties and the more recent intervention called GMO. Most of the world seems to agree that there is a distinction, enough so that we invented new language for what it is we are doing.
Edit in response to your edit:
But I wouldn't just blindly lump GMO in the same group just because it's also modern.
That's an ugly thing to say and it's not far from a personal attack. There's no blindness on my part. I'm not lumping anything in just because it's modern.
I have a genetic disorder and pay enormous attention to the details of my diet because of it. I react poorly to soy products. Research and experience suggest that my firsthand negative experiences with soy may be related to the fact that most soy in the US is GMO.
My views here have nothing at all to do with unfounded assumptions, ridiculous neurotic views of "modern" things or anything of the sort.
Africanized "killer" bees are a result of traditional crossbreeding techniques gone awry. Don't romanticize traditional agriculture; mashing up genes randomly is not an inherently safer process.
GMO is relatively new. We know a thimbleful of information about nutrition and health generally. We know even less than that about what more recent inventions do to the human body because there is simply less of a track record and time span in which to determine meaningful data and conclusions.
Saying "We don't know what this new thing does to our health" in no way romanticizes anything. It doesn't even implicitly suggest we know a heckuva a whole lot about the old thing. But the old thing is probably not going to randomly open up some metaphorical worm hole to some bizarre outcome and maybe the new thing will and we just haven't had enough of a track record to notice yet.
Thalidomide was briefly prescribed to pregnant women for nausea until they began having babies missing limbs because of it.
GMO isn’t that new is it? At this point the field is over half a century old?
Right thaolidomide was really bad and we stopped using right away. GMOs enable us to support 7 billion people, without improved yields the world would probably starve.
It’s good to question, but Questioning is different than fear mongering, there are very few wormholes
Food that subtly messes you up is notoriously hard to pinpoint.
I'm not fear mongering. I live with a genetic disorder. I've paid lots of attention to food chemistry over the past nearly two decades since getting a proper diagnosis.
I'm done with this discussion. This is the second comment accusing me of spreading fear. It's a ridiculous accusation and long experience tells me it will make zero difference how I reply. It only gets uglier from here.
> Sorry, I think there is a meaningful distinction between traditional human intervention in plant varieties and the more recent intervention called GMO.
One is a semi-random process where an unknown (but large!) number of genes are modified in the hopes of getting a few desired good traits to express themselves.
The other is a targeted change to the smallest number of genes to get a single desired good trait to be expressed.
Imagine you are going in for surgery to remove a lump, and the doctor tells you there are two options, he can cut out 20 lumps of flesh, and good chance he'll get the one you want removed, or he can remove just the lump that is causing a problem.
Which of the two options would you choose?
GMO is the later. Traditional breeding is the former.
If people want to criticize WHAT modification was done via GMO, great! Lots of good debate there, maybe inserting some particular gene is a bad idea. But let's have that discussion, not "all GMO is bad!"
Because "all GMO is bad" is nonsensical. GMO isn't some process that turns food into poison. It just changes it, in a more controlled way than breeding changes it.
That's an extremely gross misinterpretation of my point which boils down to "The effects may be different on different populations due to variables you are overlooking, such as (for example) they could be eating fundamentally different plants that happen to go by the same name."
The degree to which people actively twist my comments to railroad me with their bizarre garbage makes it enormously difficult to participate here in good faith at all. I should probably go get some other hobby and stop wasting my time on a bunch of people hellbent on trying to make me look like a nutter no matter how mild and reasonable a point I am trying to make.
genes get arbitrarily modified by evolution, breeding, or manual intervention. could a gmo food cause a problem? sure, so could a food whose genes were modified by breeding or accident of nature
Evolution and selective breeding don’t arbitrarily modify DNA. The actual methods are small random changes, copying from some other location possibly backwards, or removing segments. GMO significantly expands what kinds of changes are possible.
In practice the difference is generally not that significant, but there is some increase in risks.
Personally, I would prefer a different label for new GMO foods. Presumably, the odds of finding an undiscovered issue drops over time. So using a different label for the first 20 years is reasonably appropriate. Plenty of people are going to take slightly higher risks, so they can benefit from and thus test new cultivars.
Small random changes yes, but long specific sequences become exponentially less likely. People on the other hand can decide to add say the first 100,00 digits of Pi or some other marker for internal use. Picking a useful sequence is hard, but we have the technology to add any specific sequence as long as the plant can survive it.
So it’s not just a question of random chance adding something harmful at this point, but also malicious actors. Someone could easily decide to try and reduce the human population by reducing fertility or whatnot and new GMO crops aren’t tested for such things.
Do you know how they discovered methods of genetic modification? Retroviruses in nature. Look at HPV for one as a cause for cancer and the number of viruses embedded in human DNA. Evolution includes all of those.
Of course /nothing/ meets the goal posts of "arbitrary" including state of the art genetic modification.
We have moved past simply copying and pasting DNA and can now add arbitrary genetic sequences to any organism. Natural rice retroviruses are unlikely to carry jellyfish DNA let alone something designed from scratch.
As I said it’s probably not that meaningful of a difference, but malicious actors have serious tools to work with here not just random changes.
My apologies. When I added the "blindly lump ..." sentence, I didn't wasn't replying directly at your comment, but rather in reference to the worrying trend amongst anti-gmo movements to lump any GMO related practices in the same basket.
> That's a little like saying "There's zero difference between traditional animal husbandry and cloning."
This is a very interesting topic, actually! I can't comment on animal husbandry (much less dolly style cloning), but cutting (cloning) is a very common way to propagate crops, and has been done for longer than we care to know. It's also the natural way in which some plants and fungi propagate. There are many benefits to cloning, but there are also downsides: when disease affects one, it affects all your clones. You can protect against that by seed propagation, crossing, etc, but then you have a less predictable and consistent crop, which in the modern market is sometimes frowned upon.
I know most farmers will pick consistency over variety any time of the day because they have to make a living, and most people won't buy greenish tomatoes, yellow or green oranges, white artichokes, etc. People also expect their fruits and veggies to taste as expected, so it's difficult to sell mixed variants.
Note: I should also say I'm from a family of farmers so I'm probably biased towards defending our practices -- in our case we grow citruses, stone fruits, artichokes, aubergines, melons, etc. (not big-agro scale, think more cooperatives in rural Spain), and I do have my personal opinions on traditional techniques vs. modern vs. big-ag, use of pesticides, overstressing the soils, etc. I'm also from an area that has suffered bad droughts and deforestation over generations so I'm also not one to romanticize about traditional farming methods and some traditional attitudes. Take whatever I say with a pinch or more of salt!
I've more or less said twice I'm leaving this discussion. I'm only replying here because I think your comment here is a good faith, but misguided, attempt to engage.
My initial comment was just to make the point "Maybe you can't use Asians and their experiences as a rebuttal for some American study because maybe it's an apples to oranges comparison."
I could have said that without mentioning GMO. It's not necessarily hugely pertinent to the point.
But everyone is latching on to that detail and this has gotten enormously whackadoodle.
I stand by my original point. I even stand by everything else I've said here.
But other people reacting like I'm some strident anti GMO nutter for mildly observing that "GMO plants may be fundamentally different from non GMO plants" is not something I have any desire to engage with further.
Exactly. My 3 main concerns with GMO are anything related to pesticides, anything transgenetic, and the privatization of biology thru IP capture.
I'm sorry those risks fall under the rubric of GMO and not "corporatism" and "theft". Blame the GMO rhetoric on big agriculture.
A helpful contrasting example for the apologists:
Wheat with better nutrition and yields: good.
Wheat which requires matching pesticides, herbicides; where seeds are sterile; where seedstocks cannot be shared, reused, resold; where wheat incorporates genetic code from other plants: bad.
GMO soy is treated with different pesticides than non-GMO. What we eat still has some of the pesticide in it. It’s worth a considering the impact of the pesticide, too
You're probably right. I just wasn't sure that production and consumption of GMO soy would be so neatly linked like that, because so much of that soy is going to livestock.
Yeah, the lack of certainty of a conclusion is why the word "probably" is in that sentence. It's a qualifier. It indicates I don't actually know for certain and this is guess work. (The guess work preceded the googling up of hand-wavy numbers. It's an internet discussion, not a defense of a PhD dissertation.)
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#History