SOYBEANS AND HEALTH
One of the most enjoyable parts of my life right now is getting information directly from sources in foreign countries. This friend, Tim Shell, was perhaps the first young person I mentored into farming more than 35 years ago. He developed a pastured livestock farm in China and then Mongolia and is now in South Korea. I think you'll find this interesting.
Fret Not Thyself Because of Tofu
By Tim Shell, April 1, 2025, Ganghwa-do, Korea
After reading Joel's article about finally getting solid data on soybeans, my response reflex was triggered and I penned a comment which I couldn't post on the website because I don't have a Facebook account to log into to post it, so here it is.
A few choice thoughts on soybeans from a long time agrarian disciple of Joel's.
Fret not thyself because of tofu!
Our family has had the incredible privilege of living among Asian people since 2003 in China, Korea, and Mongolia, and the experience has been enriching beyond description. One of the greatest pleasures has been the Asian cusine. The food! Oh, how we love the authentic Asian food here. Even after all this time, we constantly encounter new items and flavors. And all this time we've enjoyed our soy based food completely guilt free, the soy products here are simply wonderful!
Just last Sunday I was served what was a new soy item for me at a chuch potluck, a soup made with boiled soybean grindings. We were informed that after the beans are ground and the milk taken for making tofu, the bean grindings are added to soup. When the Korean grandma asked me if I wanted seconds, I happily complied. It was so good! I've been in Asia twenty years and never had that dish before. Nice!
So I tell myself, something this many people, have eaten this much of, for this many thousands of years, while being this healthy, can't be bad for you. So what's the problem that all the foodies in the West are so against soy? It doesn't make any sense. The simple reality is that everyone here eats soy all the time, every day, probably every meal in one form or another.
We raised our five children here with soy and they have phenomenal, robust health, no allergies, no medications, never sick, never go to the doctor, and they've eaten lots of soy and love it. Our boys developed normal masculinity and our girls have normal femininity and good hormone balance too. No issues.
The only problem we've found is that all the soy sauce stains our teeth brown.
The Korean and Chinese foods we've eaten in Asia for two decades are full of soy, chock full of soy, in every meal, in many forms, but all minimally or naturally processed or fermented. There's nothing better for breakfast than grabbing a full-sized, one pound square of fresh, warm tofu from a street vendor and running in to douse it in soy sauce and eat it with some hard boiled eggs for a side. You haven't lived till you've tasted that. Soybean oil, soy sauce, fresh soybean sprouts, cooked soybean sprouts, fermented soybean sprouts, fermented soybean paste, fresh tofu, grilled tofu, fermented tofu, tofu in seaweed soup, soup with fresh ground boiled soybeans, and on and on it goes. It would be very difficult to avoid soy here, and there's no need to.
There is nothing wrong with soybeans, it's just a bean, like Navy, Pinto, or Great White; or do we accuse God of making a mistake? They are a staple in the Asian diet. The problem with soybeans in the West is that they are sent to a factory and highly processed into sterile, nutritionally bankrupt products like everything else. I promise you, no one eats soy burgers over here, I've never seen them or been served them. Don't be afraid of soy but chose carefully like you do with the rest of your food, with understanding and discernment. All soy is not created equal.
The Chinese have used soy in their diets to the same degree we have used dairy in the West. The things we make with milk, they make with soy. Soy bean paste is basically soybean cheese and some of it tastes exactly like Blue Cheese because the mold that ferments them is identical. Tofu is basically fresh soy milk cheese, not fermented. The beans are boiled and ground, then the soy milk is curdled into curds and whey, and the result is tofu, bean curd. To claim this is bad for ones health in the face of several thousand years of Chinese tradition seems astoundingly uninformed.
We can also ask the opinion of our animals, they love fresh ground roasted soy beans, but they refuse to eat hexane solvent extracted soybean meal after one sniff. You can't make chickens eat the solvent extracted meal unless it's in a pellet. They can be very hungry and they won't eat it.
Soy beans are good, it's all about how they are processed. If soybeans really are so bad, why are so many millions of people and animals that eat large volumes of them far more healthy than the majority of Americans?
Our family has always had a zero tolerance politcy for hydrogenated oils of any kind. We use animal fats, lard, tallow, etc, gladly and guilt free. Guests at our table are regularly embarassed to see how much butter our children put on their bread. The guests are embarassed, not the children, they like showing how it's done! They crave butter so there are no limits on butter at our table. There are few fats more life giving.
When it comes to soy bean oil, there is such a thing as hydrogenated soy bean oil which is an industrial factory product no one should ever eat. Period. But there is also such a thing as fresh pressed soybean oil from ground, roasted beans, which is what the Chinese have traditionally used. The two oils are just as different as fresh, full cream, raw milk from pastured cows is from processed pasturized, homogenized, 4% white fluid also sold as milk.
I'm so glad for soybeans and the privilege of eating them all the time with no worries in Asia. Fret not thyself because of tofu! The soybean is a blessing, not a curse.
Educating ourselves about the nuances of the soy issue, just as we do with all the other food issues, will help us greatly to sort out fact from fiction regarding soybeans. It may be possible to convince Western consumers to avoid soy, but I doubt it could ever happen in Asia. Soy is foundational to the diet here.
The only issue I see with soybeans is the glyphosate used to treat them when grown commercially. But trying to get glyphosate out of our diets will be nearly impossible, it is reportedly found now in all mother's breast milk that is tested. So, in addition to embracing the ancient motto, "Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.", our family has embraced the position that, "It's not the toxins that get in that kill you, it's the ones that never get out." (This goes along with the parallel axiom that, "It's not what happens to you that destroys your life, it's the things you never tell anyone." But that discussion will have to wait for another day.) The point is, that our family has embraced fasting as a regular part of our phycial and spiritual health maintenance in place of being overly concerned about what we eat. Fast and fret not!
Realize that even if you were to eat the best possible, beyond orgainic foods on earth, your body would be confronted with toxins just from the normal metabolism of that very good food. Metabolism yields waste. Your body's key to long term health is excretion. All the naturopaths proclaim the foundational to proper health starts with proper elimination and without it they cannot help you; hence the enemas, saunas, etc. This is why most of the West is in poor health, the body is never given time to take out the trash. A pause in eating is all that's needed. Fasting is turbo-charged excretion.
Thirty years ago there was very little information about the benefits of fasting online or in literature, however, this has changed. Fasting and intermittent fasting are being understood and promoted like never before. A favorite promoter, especially for women is Dr. Mindy Pelz. There is no excuse for anyone in the West to be uninformed about this healing modality any longer. All we have to do is stop eating occasionally for the body to cleanse. If we adopt fasting as a lifestyle, we no longer have to worry so much about glyphosate or what's in things we eat, drink and breathe. Remember that no creature in nature gets to eat all it wants all the time, they all go through cycles of feasting and famine, and we would do well to do likewise.
While our family definitely leans into the healthiest foods we can obtain, we have left behind the majority of our food concerns. In Asia there is no telling what we are eating anyway, regardless of how it's labeled. It might even be radioactive! So when we eat out we follow two rules, we don't look in the kitchen and we enjoy our meals. We also believe that when we give thanks for our food, the bad things can be transmuted into good things by our Creator. He's perfectly capable of turning glyphosate into vitamin C for us. Faith over fear!
Fasting can also be applied to our livestock that eat soy. We should be investing all this money, research, energy and angst about soy into learning how to incorporate fasting into our livestock production. There are reports of cattle living productive lives to thirty years of age by fasting them regularly. Even our family milk cow, Heidi, that lived under Polyface style management in the hills of Bath County, Va on an exclusive grass diet and birthed twenty-two calves only lived twenty-five years. What if we had fasted her regularly? There is no way letting an animal go without food for a day will hurt them. What if hospitals incorporated this into treatment programs?
Eat anything, fast regularly. Live free! Enjoy your soy!
Fret not thyself because of tofu!
No question today; just thought this was good information to add to the body of knowledge.