Chris Salvato
11-26-2008, 08:00 AM
I am a bit surprised that when I did a search for "soy" i got "No Results" on all of P-Menu...
I am just a bit in the dark about Soy. Soy is a common ammunition used by vegetarians as their defense that they can get ample protein. However, most people deny that this is valid because of the "health risks" of consuming soy in abundance, especially as the only source of protein.
Steve Low and I had a conversation about protein sources, this was pretty much the result of said conversation:
Re: protein sources.
NITROGEN. All amino acids have nitrogen in them and they must have nitrogen in them to make peptide bonds. Nitrogen is highly toxic to our bodies (like most other things), so we have a pathway called the urea cycle which processes amino acids into urea which our body excretes into urine.
UNFORTUNATELY, since nitrogen is toxic, there are pretty much no other biological sources of nitrogen that we can intake besides proteins that our body can process. Therefore, if you have no extra nitrogen sources, your body cannot make amino acids which is the take 99% of the time (the few exceptions are DNA which have nitrogenous bases.. but this is very, very, very small amount compared to how much you get from meat, fish, eggs, etc.). Thus, these protein metabolism pathways are mainly for getting rid of nitrogen OR if you have too much of say one amino acid it can convert it into another non-essential amino acid.
All humans MUST have adequate protein intake... not just essential amino acid intake. You can't just randomly "create" amino acids like you're thinking of because the parts are scarce (nitrogen) and only really abundant in meat, fish, eggs, etc.
In short, without nitrogen sources, we cannot take convert amino acids to protein bonds as easily. Someone, however, refuted this claim by Steve saying:
However I don't think I follow you at all on nitrogen, because animal sources are not any different in terms of nitrogen. You also don't need extra nitrogen in any form to make peptide bonds, you just need to put any 2 aminoacids close together.
Animals don't produce nitrogen either, generally the only thing that fixates nitrogen and creates new aminoacids are plants and bacteria, not animals (they simply consume it and store it).
The whole ordeal confused me, so I went to PubMed to look at any studies that examined Soy. Something else I wanted to investigate was the claim in Greg's O-lifting book that Soy studies have alarming results for the CV system. After thumbing around for a bit I found nothing but data that says soy may not be beneficial -- but its certainly not harmful.
If anyone has any thoughts/data they can share on this to refute the claims I see on PubMed and support Steve and/or Greg, then that would be great....but right now I fail to see the problem with Soy even though I have discouraged people from eating it for a long while.
I am just a bit in the dark about Soy. Soy is a common ammunition used by vegetarians as their defense that they can get ample protein. However, most people deny that this is valid because of the "health risks" of consuming soy in abundance, especially as the only source of protein.
Steve Low and I had a conversation about protein sources, this was pretty much the result of said conversation:
Re: protein sources.
NITROGEN. All amino acids have nitrogen in them and they must have nitrogen in them to make peptide bonds. Nitrogen is highly toxic to our bodies (like most other things), so we have a pathway called the urea cycle which processes amino acids into urea which our body excretes into urine.
UNFORTUNATELY, since nitrogen is toxic, there are pretty much no other biological sources of nitrogen that we can intake besides proteins that our body can process. Therefore, if you have no extra nitrogen sources, your body cannot make amino acids which is the take 99% of the time (the few exceptions are DNA which have nitrogenous bases.. but this is very, very, very small amount compared to how much you get from meat, fish, eggs, etc.). Thus, these protein metabolism pathways are mainly for getting rid of nitrogen OR if you have too much of say one amino acid it can convert it into another non-essential amino acid.
All humans MUST have adequate protein intake... not just essential amino acid intake. You can't just randomly "create" amino acids like you're thinking of because the parts are scarce (nitrogen) and only really abundant in meat, fish, eggs, etc.
In short, without nitrogen sources, we cannot take convert amino acids to protein bonds as easily. Someone, however, refuted this claim by Steve saying:
However I don't think I follow you at all on nitrogen, because animal sources are not any different in terms of nitrogen. You also don't need extra nitrogen in any form to make peptide bonds, you just need to put any 2 aminoacids close together.
Animals don't produce nitrogen either, generally the only thing that fixates nitrogen and creates new aminoacids are plants and bacteria, not animals (they simply consume it and store it).
The whole ordeal confused me, so I went to PubMed to look at any studies that examined Soy. Something else I wanted to investigate was the claim in Greg's O-lifting book that Soy studies have alarming results for the CV system. After thumbing around for a bit I found nothing but data that says soy may not be beneficial -- but its certainly not harmful.
If anyone has any thoughts/data they can share on this to refute the claims I see on PubMed and support Steve and/or Greg, then that would be great....but right now I fail to see the problem with Soy even though I have discouraged people from eating it for a long while.