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Eating a half serving a day of soy-based foods could be enough to significantly lower a man's sperm count, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The study is the largest in humans to look at the relationship between semen quality and a plant form of the female sex hormone estrogen known as phytoestrogen, which is plentiful in soy-rich foods. "What we found was men that consume the highest amounts of soy foods in this study had a lower sperm concentration compared to those who did not consume soy foods," said Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in...

Corn hits record, soy rallies as floods expand By Julie Ingwersen and Nigel Hunt Thu Jun 12, 1:39 PM ET Corn prices soared to record highs on Thursday as flooding damaged crop prospects in the U.S. Midwest, heightening concern over shrinking stocks and fueling the market's relentless advance. Torrential rains have swept across the Midwest, the key growing region in the world's top producer, resulting in floods which have destroyed homes, as well as thousands of acres of corn and soybeans. "It's the worst in recent memory, at a time when demand has never been higher," said Gavin Maguire, analyst...

...........After years of consuming various forms of soy nearly every day, I felt reasonably fit, but somewhere along the line I'd stopped menstruating. I couldn't figure out why my stomach became so upset after I ate edamame or why I was often moody and bloated. It didn't occur to me at the time to question soy, heart protector and miracle food.

ATLANTA (AP) - A vegan couple were sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for the death of their malnourished 6-week-old baby boy, who was fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice.

Scientists at a state animal health laboratory confirmed Monday that a popular brand of pet food submitted for testing by Marin veterinarians was indeed contaminated, even though it is not on a growing list of recalled pet foods. At the request of the Mill Valley Pet Clinic, three varieties of Nutro Max Cat Gourmet Classics, in 3-ounce cans, were tested by the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Here’s a prediction: Five years from now we will look back and say that 2007 was a watershed year for Arkansas’ economy and its environment. And we’ll be able to sum up the reason in one word: biodiesel. As I hope to make clear in a moment, a few key policy decisions now will let Arkansas play to our strengths and become a national leader in biodiesel and other biofuels. And every part of the state’s economy will benefit as a result. Biodiesel is the term for fuel made from renewable feedstocks such as soybean oil, cottonseed oil, even chicken...

Last week's column ("Soy is making kids 'gay'") got a lot of attention – 500 e-mails and three dozen media interview requests – because it blindsided the overwhelming majority of readers. Perhaps fewer than 10 percent of us are aware that soybeans are a hotly debated topic in medical circles today. Soy products – eaten, drunk, and slipped into thousands of commercial products – are rightly being blamed for a horrendous variety of medical conditions, several of them nearing epidemic status and a few of them irreversible. Pediatricians and other doctors are starting to see a growing parade of patients...

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular. Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food. The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore. I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of...

A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals Posted: December 12, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular. Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food. The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them...

Washington, D.C., November 27, 2006 – Having successfully turned pieces of giant soybean stalks into charcoal briquettes, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) chemical engineer Justin Barone now believes they would make good fiberboard and other wood-substitute products as well. ARS geneticist Thomas E. Devine took the plants to Barone after noticing they had a rare ability to stand up straight all season, despite their unusual height of up to 7 feet. Soybean plants often lodge—fall down—as they grow taller. Barone is with the ARS Environmental Management and Byproduct Utilization Laboratory, and Devine is with the ARS Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, both...

Abstract Recent reports of problem foods in Mainland China have raised global concerns about the safety of Chinese food products. Drawing on reliable data extracted from Chinese newspapers, magazines and the Internet, this report, the second in the series, takes a closer look at the hair-made soy sauce, a common kitchen-accessory for marinating and seasoning foods. It seeks to inform the scientific and medical communities regarding the potential short- and long-term epidemic consequences of consuming such soy sauce

When discussing economic policies it is important to not let rhetoric overpower reality. That happened in a recent, much-reprinted New York Times article that argued "endless fields of corn in the Midwest can be distilled into endless gallons of ethanol … that could end any worldwide oil shortage … and free the United States from dependence on foreign energy." The story went on to discuss how much energy goes into producing ethanol. But it failed to substantiate its lead assertion of "endless gallons of ethanol" that might "free the United States" from oil imports. The United States is an agricultural...

Eating veggie burgers and tofu to lower "bad" cholesterol may not help, a new review of soy's health benefits suggests. The American Heart Association reviewed 22 randomized trials comparing soy protein and the soy component isoflavone to milk or other proteins. The majority of the trials concluded soy led to an average decrease in LDL or "bad" cholesterol levels of just three per cent. "This reduction is very small relative to the large amount of soy protein tested in these studies, averaging 50 grams, about half the usual total daily protein intake," the committee wrote in the Jan. 17 online...

When Walter Horita, a second-generation Japanese-Brazilian, staked his first claim in the raw savannah of Brazil's interior, back in 1984, there were no roads, telephones or running water in this stretch of the state of Bahia. Bandits had just murdered his neighbors and taken their land. Undeterred, the 20-year-old lived under a black plastic tarp as he cleared the first 420 acres of armadillos and anacondas for modest crops of soy and rice. Twenty years later Walter Horita's pilot is flying him in his twin-engine Beechcraft over his 74,000-acre estate, tidy homesteads and blindingly white, high quality cotton fields that...

Environmentally conscious vegetarians could soon be facing a dilemma. It just so happens that their curious culinary customs may be destroying the Amazon rainforest. According to a recent report, entire sections of the rainforest are vanishing to make room for the vegetarian’s best friend: In the past year, almost half of the total deforestation was in the state of Mato Grosso on the forest’s southern fringe, where huge areas have been flattened to grow soybeans. Last year Brazil earned about $10 billion from exporting soy products, exceeding its income from coffee and sugar, the country’s traditional export crops. Mato Grosso’s...

Vegetarians are killing the rainforest, Dramatic rise in Soy Consumption threate.. The following transcript is from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio show "The Current", and aired this morning. You can read the full article on the attached link. Soy Beans - Greenpeace It's been called the "Magic Bean" -- hailed by nutritionists as a wonderfood---it's rich in protein and apparently cuts the risks of all kinds of diseases. We're talking about the soy bean. And we’re afraid we’ve got some bad news about a food that's been called "nature's medicine". Precisely because of these many health claims, there has been...

One single cow. That’s all it took for the ultimate loss of an estimated $7 billion to the beleaguered, over-regimented by government Canadian cattle industry. There were no Sherlock Holmes-type detectives out on the hunt trying to find out how the sick cow showed up one day in land-vast Canada. A long-term, proud Canadian tradition, the once thriving cattle industry, was plunged into crisis by the discovery of a single infected cow. The clues of the Canadian Mad Cow Mystery are worth at least a serious look: In May of 2003, an Alberta Black Angus with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE),...

European traders said... Iraq's Grain Board had purchased about 300,000 tonnes of US hard red winter wheat in a tender. If confirmed, it would be one of the single largest sales of wheat to Iraq in recent years... In the 1980s and 1990s the US was a major supplier of wheat to Iraq, but since then Australia has stepped in as the primary supplier of wheat bought by Baghdad. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that Iraq will buy around 2.6 million tonnes of wheat this year. Another US source puts the figure at around 3 million tonnes.

Soy Formula May Stunt the Intestinal Growth in Your Baby   Concerns regarding the safety of soy formula were raised after two studies revealed that the amounts of soy isoflavone genistein, a chemical found in commercial soy formulas, might inhibit the intestinal growth in babies. There is a great deal of merit surrounding this concern, particularly because nearly 25 percent of formula-fed babies in the United States consume soy formula.Commercial soy formulas contain anywhere from 32 to 45 milligrams of genistein. These concentration levels exceed the amount found to affect menstrual cycles in women. Since formula is the only...

Men: Beware how much soy you consume. It could change your behavior. It's long been known that soy is beneficial to women in a number of ways, but new research from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center indicates the same is not true for men. In fact, a diet rich in soy isoflavones, especially through the use of soy supplements, can have marked influences on patterns of aggression and social behavior in men, reports HealthDayNews. Isoflavones, which are found in soy protein, are a naturally occurring plant estrogen. For women, the benefits of a diet rich in soy are numerous....

ROCHELLE, Ill. (Reuters) - Golden mountains are rising out of the fertile farmlands of the U.S. Midwest, a changing landscape formed by huge piles of corn from the most bountiful harvest in U.S. history. As farmers run out of space to store crops at home, they are bringing corn to country elevators, which are now bursting at the seams with grain. The excess is piling up on the ground in farm communities across the Midwest as this year's harvest surpasses available storage space by about 10 percent. American farmers are expected to harvest 11.7 billion bushels of corn and more...

When Eileen Haraminac, 53, of St. Clair Shores, Mich., began experiencing symptoms of menopause - intense hot flashes, as many as 15 a day, waking in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and fitful sleep - she knew she needed help. But she was also aware that there were problems with hormone therapy, the standard treatment for menopause symptoms. Studies have linked it to a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, blood clots and breast cancer. This concern, combined with Mrs. Haraminac's general philosophy about medications - avoid them if possible - persuaded her to try a more...

Tests Show U.S. Failure to Block Contamination From Gene-Altered Varieties Much of the U.S. supply of ordinary crop seeds has become contaminated with strands of engineered DNA, suggesting that current methods for segregating gene-altered seed plants from traditional varieties are failing, according to a pilot study released yesterday. More than two-thirds of 36 conventional corn, soy and canola seed batches contained traces of DNA from genetically engineered crop varieties in lab tests commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based advocacy group. The actual amount of foreign DNA present in U.S. seeds appears to be small, and most engineered...

A big billboard in Spokane, WA, along one of the busiest streets in town, is the latest forum for PETA to spew forth it's idiocy. There's a large cartoon drawing of Santa, with his hand pulling open the waist of his pants, and him looking down into his pants with a sad look on his face. The main caption reads "Santa's not coming this year..." The next line says that Santa's IMPOTENT because he drinks too much MILK! At the bottom is an encouragement to drink SOY MILK, followed by the PETA symbol! ARRRRGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Does their stupidity know no bounds??...

Soy's Thyroid Dangers A Look at the Dangers of Soy to the Health of Your Thyroidby Mary J. Shomon Health and nutrition magazines tout the benefits of soy as a cure-all for women's health, hormonal problems, cancer prevention, weight loss, and many other problems. The reality, however, is that promotion of soy may be more a matter of business and marketing, rather than recommendations based on sound scientific evidence.Isoflavones, the key components of soy that make them so potent as a possible substitute for hormone replacement, mean that soy products, while touted as foods and nutritional products -- often are...