Dangers of soy explained by Elaine Hollingsworth

[chloe]

Anyone read this, actually had never heard of this woman either anyone read anything else by her?

[vegimator]

Does this sound like someone who knows much about science or medicine?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Hollingsworth

[beforewisdom]

Anyone read this, actually had never heard of this woman either anyone read anything else by her?

Here is a link to the article referred to above:
http://hartkeisonline.com/whole-and-nat ... ingsworth/

At the bottom of it is this quote:

Elaine Hollingsworth, author of “Take Control of Your Health and Escape the Sickness Industry” and doctorsaredangerous.com, has been campaigning to expose the dangers and failings of the so-called health industry and the manipulation and dishonesty of the food and drug manufacturers for more than 50 years.

[beforewisdom]

I collect articles about soy on my blog. Most of the articles are written by authors with standard, accepted credentials.

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/category/soy/

[etherspin]

she loves that five times the hormones of a birth control meme clearly..
I wanted to read further but this page would have been an abomination of web design in 1997 not to mention 2012 http://www.doctorsaredangerous.com/illn ... nesses.htm

[beforewisdom]

I'm in the field. I'm familiar with early web page designs. Her design is quite modern, though her colors are atrocious.

[rattus]

this page would have been an abomination of web design in 1997 not to mention 2012

An abomination unto Nuggan.

[HumanGazelle]

How very retro. Loving that early-2000s pink-blue melange of pre-CSS Dreamweavery junk code and the Photoshoppy gradient tool.

Anyway, on a more serious note, I had never heard of her before and just skimmed her site and the interwebs for 5 mins to collect some thoughts. Essentially that article and her website rants strike me as all rhyme and no reason. She has no qualifications, no academic background of any relevance and every polemic takes the tone of a conspiracy theorist. If there is any grain of truth in anything she says, it is obscured by the morass of irrelevant opinion, anecdote and hearsay, so her position as a whole is just plain bullshit.

But life is simply too short to sit down and methodically take apart her poorly-informed, pseudo-scientific polemics. Maybe someone else has the energy or the inclination to do so but whilst I'm shameless enough to avoid work to post this comment, I do still have enough dignity about me not to want to get drawn in any further.

For a starting point on how to take her, you could do worse than check this thread from the James Randi site (the JREF is the seat of all rational positions against quackery and bogus science):
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=31435


Still, you've got to adore the ironic contradiction between her domain name:

http://www.doctorsaredangerous.com/

and the disclaimer that appears on every page of her site:

Legal Disclaimer: The products, articles and other content on http://www.doctorsaredangerous.com are not offered for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of any disease or disorder, nor have any statements herein been evaluated by any government agencies. Said content is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care professional with regard to matters pertaining to your health.

[Herbsman]

I collect articles about soy on my blog. Most of the articles are written by authors with standard, accepted credentials.

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/category/soy/

I just read this article that you linked to...

Asia continues to dominate soy milk consumption

Eight of the top 12 soy drink consuming countries are Asian with Hong Kong residents consuming the most at 17 litres per year each, according to TetraPak data.

Next were Singapore (almost 12l/day), Thailand (just over 10l/day), China (9.5l/day) and Malaysia (9l/day). The data were presented at a soy conference in Taiwan recently by Michael Loh, the business development director at supplier, London Agricultural Commodities.

The highest level of soy drink consumption among non-Asian nations were Australia, Canada and Spain all at about 3l/day.

US consumption, which market researcher Mintel has noted is falling for all soy foods and beverages, was lower at about 1.5l/day.

Wait... WHAT?!

Let's re-read this...

"Hong Kong residents consuming the most at 17 litres per year each"

"Singapore (almost 12l/day)"

First of all, 17 litres a year is not very much. Secondly, 12 litres a day is not only way more than that (4380l/year), it is also f***ing ridiculous! Who the hell drinks 12 litres of anything, never mind soy milk, per day?

[vegimator]

I think he must have meant year when he wrote day... repeatedly.

[Herbsman]

I doubt it. I drink 4 litres of soy milk a week. That's 208 litres per year. Maybe they meant per week, or per month, I don't know. If the figure is calculated by mean average of entire populations then it's rubbish anyway.

[Talyn]

it probably meant oz per day

[beforewisdom]

The Australian Per Day?

[Fallen_Horse]

300,000,000 Americans

Say 1.0% of them drink 1 cup of soy milk a day (on average that's probably not far off).

That gives 3,000,000 cups/day, which 700,000 liters/day

Now, per person, per year, that's 0.08 l/yr

So extrapolating that back, the study is saying that Americans consume 1.5 l/day, but I believe it means 1.5 l/yr.

This would give numbers more like 18% of Americans drink 1 cup per day or 1% of Americans drink 18 cups/day or 9% of Americans drink 2 cups/day, etc. I can see this being true.

So I believe the study is referring to number of liters per person per year, even though it says per day.

[Konstantin]

Essentially that article and her website rants strike me as all rhyme and no reason. She has no qualifications, no academic background of any relevance and every polemic takes the tone of a conspiracy theorist.

You would only say that it you were part of the conspiracy yourself.