Soylent Soy is Made of People!

Okay, not really but that doesn't mean it belongs on your plate or in your mouth. Much like Lierre Keith when I first went vegan protein was the problem and soy was the solution everyone gave me. The bit of research I did on my own seemed to yield a wide variety of potential sources of protein, from legumes to nuts to green leafy vegetables. When I tried to bring this up to other vegans they poo-poo'd it and handed me a tofurky sandwich. "So this is what vegans eat," I thought.

After a few years I had really developed a taste for all kinds of soy products. I used to go to Little Saigon to buy fried tofu in bulk. I just couldn't get enough of it and if I didn't get enough, I felt hungry. Something started to happen to my digestion, with which I'd never had a problem with. Acid reflux started to appear too.

Desperate for solutions I gave raw food a try. At first I just ate 80-20 and didn't really experience any noticeable results. I wasn't really detoxing, nor was I eating a proper diet. That's when I found out about juice feasting.

I'm sure you've noticed the link to the left to David Rainoshek's Juice Feasting site. This is where I got all the information I needed to start my own 92-day juice feast. I described the process in more detail in a previous post, but basically a juice feast is a modified juice fast, where you drink 3-4 + quarts of juice a day and use the right vegetables to fill your body's nutritional needs. You'll get some detox symptoms, but these will be easier to handle since you're not starving yourself. And the best part is you get cleaner on the inside (and I think you know what I mean by that) than with almost any other cleanse.

My 92 days of juice completely turned my health around. I lost 60 pounds, got rid of all the digestive problems and gained dramatic insights both into diet and into myself. Since then I've been back on raw food, only this time it's raw food done right. There are a lot of aspects to a healthy raw vegan diet, which I'll get to in future posts. The most important component of my diet, and the largest source of protein are green leafy vegetables.

So this is what it took to repair the damage soy did to my system. I'm glad I did it and I've benefited in a lot of other ways, but it's because of my vegan experience that I cannot recommend soy as a health food. Lierre uses this conclusion as a reason to "save" people from the vegan diet.

Although non-raw veganism has it's pitfalls, particularly in it's overemphasis on soy and stored grains, they are far fewer and less severe than those of meat consumption. Besides, are you really going to take health advice from someone who doesn't believe cholesterol contributes to heart disease? Get real Lierre, you bring up some good points about our agricultural system, but large scale free range farming is not the answer. Frankly we don't have 1/4 of the pasture land it would take to feed a planet full of Lierre Keiths.