SCOTT: Welcome back everyone, you’re listening to the Life Enthusiasm Co-op Online Radio Network restoring vitality to you and to the planet. I'm your co-host Scott Patton, and joining us as usual is the founder of the Life Enthusiast Co-op, Martin Pytela. Hey Martin, how are you doing today?

MARTIN: Awesome. Thank you Scott. Are you all right?

SCOTT: I'm doing great. It's a beautiful sunny day in the neighborhood.

MARTIN: Have you had your wheaties?

SCOTT: I have, I had my Exsula this morning, the Iridesca. I'm all pumped up, ready to go, and I'm always amazed when I compare how I feel half an hour after I have the Iridesca compared to how I feel half an hour after I pig out with a bunch of chocolate jujubes. There is no comparison.

MARTIN: We do have our addictions, don't we?

SCOTT: Yes, yeah, that's right.

MARTIN: Funny.

SCOTT: It doesn't matter if it's cocaine or sugar.

MARTIN: Well actually, I think sugar might be more addictive than cocaine.

SCOTT: Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah, really. Because at the genetic level, we are programmed to crave certain foods, and it's the industrial food manufacturers that have clued into it. The fast food industry understands it really well. And they serve you food that is sweet, creamy, oily, and salty all at the same time. And you have absolutely no power to resist. Your brain is totally wired for it, you will come back and you will crave even more.

SCOTT: And then we have that part of our population that has no choice in what they eat. For example, people that have gone into our prison systems and are convicts. And there was an article in the last little while in the Washington Times about Illinois convicts going to court because the diet that they're eating in court is causing lots of problems.

MARTIN: Right. Well, actually thanks for sharing the article with me. And the first thing I'm looking at is Eddie Martinez, a native of Puerto Rico. Right? So, I'm thinking, okay, this fellow is genetically either African or Hispanic or both. And the Hispanics are primarily hunter-gatherer stock. Most Hispanics—I cannot generalize, but many, many, many, like a large percentage of them are supposed to be eating a diet that's fairly low in carbs and high in proteins and fats. But Africans, most of the African people have been snatched from the coastal regions of Equatorial Africa. All of them were genetically adapted to living on the coast. They were mostly fishermen eating fish, seaweed, and coconut. And what do we do with them here? Describe the beautiful diets that the government has decreed to be the healthful wholesome food.

SCOTT: Soy rich.

MARTIN: Well, on this news, there's a wonderful little tray showing the grub that they serve to these prisoners. And it has pizza, fries, salad, a frozen fruit dessert, and a drink. And I wonder if the drink isn't a cola. Anyway, carbo heaven. So if you happen to be one of the people who's genetically predisposed to be carbo dominant, you'll be okay. But if you are one of the protein-fat dominant people, you'll suffer terribly. And here he goes listing belching, pain, cramps, and constipation. Yeah, absolutely. Now he's blaming it on soy-rich diets, right?

SCOTT: Yeah.

MARTIN: Well, so be it. Soy is no friend of anyone.

SCOTT: What's the problem with soy, Martin? I mean, I keep hearing about all the benefits. And I go into the health food stores and they're full of soy drinks, and soy ice cream, and tofu, and soya burgers, and soya chicken, and soya turkeys.

MARTIN: And the main argument here will be because it's available through government policy. I mean, again, politicians meddling with nature. They set up regulatory environments and the grain-growing farmers are dramatically subsidized, especially the very large farmers. They collect billions in subsidies.

SCOTT: But I thought soybeans were healthy foods?

MARTIN: Well, no.

SCOTT: They’re not.

MARTIN: Well, let's start from the general. All whole grains have this defense built in, which is a covering of enzymes that are phytoestrogenic. They have an estrogenic or feminizing effect on everybody who eats the whole grain. And this is whole wheat, whole soy, whole flax, whole anything. Until you sprout it, they will have this effect. And of course, most people don't sprout it. I mean, most manufacturing processes in North America with the industrial food manufacturing don't bother sprouting anything.

SCOTT: Okay, so again, I'm not talking about if I had one soy thing once every 10 years. But if it's in all of the foods that we're talking about, you're really talking about the demasculation of half the population.

MARTIN: Right. Yeah, man boobs, no hair, thinning eyebrows, essential castration while walking.

SCOTT: Okay, and then from the female perspective, are there problems with soy for the female population?

MARTIN: When they're young, it's quite all right. It's manageable because they manufacture estrogen to manage their cycle. And estrogen is the feminine hormone, but the problem is the balance. It's just like taking a birth control pill without the break in between. A woman is supposed to have high estrogen in half of her cycle and then her progesterone in the other. There's this natural rise and mistiming. So when you are helping only one side and not the other, you're going to create an imbalance. So you will have reproductive problems and you will have PMS issues and tender breasts. And you, trouble, in capital letters.

SCOTT: Right. So in this article, they talk about the fact that the Department of Corrections inmates regularly consumed about 100 grams of soy protein, and about 25 grams is recommended as part of a healthy diet. So it's kind of interesting where they come up with that number in terms of a healthy diet. But even that, you’ve got four times more than what's recommended, which just can't be that good.

MARTIN: So let's start with the two issues that you just put down. One is the recommended, again, government regulation that totally ignores biological individuality. 25 grams of protein a day is totally okay for a sympathetic or a slow oxidizer because those people are carbo-dominants and they don't need a lot of protein. But if you're a parasympathetic or a fast oxidizer, meaning that your diet should be dominant in proteins and fats and low in carbs, you're going to be probably in trouble if you are on the 25 grams of protein. Now these people put 100 grams of protein on, that should be okay. If it was 100 grams of protein that's actually healthy. But what happens here is that this is the protein that concentrates the plant soy-based protein. We can find all kinds of plant proteins. We have hemp protein and pea protein and rice protein and whatever else proteins out there. But for instance, if you look at Life Enthusiast, we have a plant protein concentrate made by Sprouted Living. It's called Sprouty, and that stuff is made from actually sprouted and then concentrated grains. That stuff is actually good and healthy, and every vegetarian who needs protein supplementation should be happy to take that. But not the unfermented soy concentrate. It's just bad news.

SCOTT: Okay, so let me see if I got this straight. We have these proteins that come from, let's say, unprocessed, factory soybeans, wheat, everything else. We just sort of throw it into this manufacturing system and they grind it up and do whatever they do to it.

MARTIN: Make your hamburger patty.

SCOTT: Make your hamburger patty or whatever. So it's got all the estrogen and everything else in it, and it's not in a form that people that have a tough time with protein can even really use properly. But if we were to sprout it, then it's pretty much available in a nutrient-rich form for everybody?

MARTIN: Right. Yes. If we took the time to do it right instead of taking the cheap, low-cost, ignorant method, you'd be fine. But because you're using the industrial engineering brain, you're not getting the results.

SCOTT: Okay. And the other thing that came up with this poor inmate part of the class action suit against the corrections people. He also talked about, this is a quote: “I keep reading about cancer risks.” And obviously this is upsetting.

MARTIN: Absolutely he should be upset. And yes, there are high cancer risks associated with hormonal imbalances. Especially in men, it will be prostate cancer. And in women it will be ovarian and breast cancer. Those are the primary cancers associated with this stupid diet.

SCOTT: Wow.

MARTIN: And there’s a little cool thing, Sarah Sally Fallon. Actually, she's now called Sally Fallon Morell, whose articles we also have on our website. She's the president of the Weston Price Foundation. She's just describing how previously the meat products served in prisons were made from animal proteins. But now it's been switched. Now it's a mix of 70% soy protein and 30% real animal protein flesh... something. I don't know—they probably feed them the scraps, right? We used to call it the artificial meat. It's whatever you get off the bones, grind it up, and turn it into this sort of amorphous protein goo. And then you reform it to make it look like something.

SCOTT: Right, right, right.

MARTIN: Yes. So anyway, we have this problem that, number one, we're starting with ignoring biological individuality. Number two, we have governments that are pushing the wrong kinds of policies into agriculture. They give preferential treatment to growing the wrong kinds of foods like wheat, corn, and soy. So we end up with too much wheat, too much corn, too much soy—in everything, just on margin. From corn, we now have this famous high-fructose corn syrup, that should never have happened. We now burn soy or corn for alcohol to try and power the same tractors that we spend three times as much fuel just raising that same corn. Anyway, I'm just getting off on a side track.

SCOTT: Right, so just to get back to soy. If you go to the Life Enthusiast Co-op website, life-enthusiast.com, and you head over to the education section, the health education section, you'll see near the bottom there is “soy.” And we've got a number of articles there about it so you can kind of review it for yourself. As I was reading through it, I was just totally shocked. Soy blocks vitamin and mineral absorption. They have the highest phytate levels of any grain or legume, and they're highly resistant to techniques to reduce it. I don't even know what that is.

MARTIN: This is important. Phytate, or phytic acid—when ingested by people who are protein dominant this blocks mineral absorption. So osteoporosis epidemic coming your way, baby.

SCOTT: Yeah. It promotes clot creation.

MARTIN: Yes.

MARTIN: And brain strokes and brain problems, yes.

SCOTT: And then out here, some of these words I’ve never seen before, but there is some sort, they inhibit the synthesis of other steroid hormones. And so you have infertility, reproductive problems. We wonder why so many women have problems having kids. And here we have, yeah, well, I’ve been eating soy for 20 years. Well, no wonder. Then you have thyroid and liver disease because of the stuff that they get from it. And it’s supposed to, oh yeah, it’s supposed to lower cholesterol. However,

MARTIN: For certain body types.

SCOTT: Right. For certain body types, right? And of course, as you’ve mentioned many times, the government thinks we are all the same. So if it just works for this, we do a study, and for these people it works, and it should work for everybody. And of course, that’s not always the case.

MARTIN: Yeah.

SCOTT: And the Swiss Health Service estimates that 100 grams of soy protein, which is exactly what that prisoner was getting, provides the equivalent of one birth control pill. So basically we’re feeding every prisoner a birth control pill. And I mean, I don’t want to get into “should we be” I think we should be defending everybody. And we shouldn’t be torturing them and all the rest of it. But if that’s what they’re putting in there, then how long before it’s in our school system for our kids to be eating? And how long before it’s in the general, I mean, it already is. Yeah, like I said before, in the health food stores, they’ve got all this soy and tofu stuff that’s supposed to be healthy. And it’s like, well, it’s not black and white.

MARTIN: So let’s just talk about the good parts about soy. There is a good part to it. When you eat fermented, traditionally fermented soy products, such as miso or tempeh, they are actually normal, healthful dietary sources. If you use tofu, don’t. But you can certainly use miso. You can certainly use tempeh. Those are processed in such a way through the fermentation process that the negative effect is removed. And for instance, in the Exsula manufacturing, the same Exsula product that you declared as something you enjoy, we use soy lecithin. So I get calls from people saying, “Well, you’re telling me that soy is bad and then you use soy lecithin. How incongruous is that?” Or maybe it should be incongruous, I forget how English is spoken today. Anyway, the point is this: when you extract lecithin from whatever source, lecithin is the binding agent that binds fats to water. /shop/ex3701-xtrapure-lecithin-3509 is in everything that contains any oils, plant oils. So of course, we extract soy oil, we can extract the lecithin from that. We could have corn lecithin or rice lecithin or egg lecithin. It doesn’t matter how we source it. What’s important is that by the end of this extraction process, there are no proteins left in the mix. And it’s the proteins in the plant that are the cause of concern here.

SCOTT: Cool. So Martin, I think we’ve scared everybody off of soybeans for the time being. Let’s talk a little bit about some of the new things that are going to be happening at the Life Enthusiast Co-op.

MARTIN: We sure have a talent for segwaying things. I have been working like a fool for the last six months, working on upgrades to the Life Enthusiast website. First, I thought it was going to take three months, then I thought six. Now I’m admitting that it’s going to be probably nine months. So maybe it’s going to be a baby! But anyway, the website is taking shape, and pretty soon we’ll be releasing a full upgrade, bringing us into the modern age of the internet, allowing mobile users to actually enjoy the experience. That’s the main reason. When I looked and realized that 10 to 15% of our visitors are using a mobile device, probably a smartphone to look at our website, I realized that we’re not treating these people well. That we need to do something for them. And I thought we could upgrade the existing website—but not so. The technology had to be completely redone from the ground up. So this is turning out to be a very costly adventure, but I’m really excited about how much improved this thing is going to be.

SCOTT: I can’t wait to see it.

MARTIN: Faster checkout, faster lookup. We’re even talking about introducing flat rate or even free shipping, at least for the customers in the United States, which is most of our customers.

SCOTT: Fortunately, the US Postal System—the US Mail—has had some really difficult times lately. I don’t know what law it was that Congress passed, but all of a sudden they’re causing the post office to start losing money. It seems like they’re extracting the revenue out of the system. But anyway, the problem is that international shipping costs are going up quite a bit. So I’m sad for our international clients, because it’s probably 15 or 20% more expensive to ship anything to them than it was a year ago. I don’t know—I can’t show you just yet what it’s going to look like but, pretty soon we’ll be pulling the curtains on it.

SCOTT: Cool. So any last words you want to say as far as soybeans go? I’m really excited about the new site. I can’t wait to see how it looks and pick it up on my iPhone.

MARTIN: Thoughts about soy? It’s thoughts about anything whole grain. Watch what you’re eating. The biggest culprits are the concentrates like soy milk—that’s made by concentrating the protein in liquid form. And all of the proteins like the tofu and there you have it. And of course, none of the plant oils other than olive and flax are terribly usable. Sorry—I should say that differently. Most of the plant oils that you can buy in a grocery store—if you look closer at the label—will say “refined.” When you read that, that means all the good stuff has been taken out. Soy oil, together with all the other oils - forget it. Scott, I’m all talked about.

SCOTT: Well, I think we said everything we need to say about soy. And you know, if the convicts in the prison system are complaining about it, we should be paying some attention. I think they’re kind of like the canary in the coal mine. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us. You’ve been listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-op Online Radio Network—Restoring vitality to you and to the planet. And we look forward to having you with us next time.