Soy is Detrimental to the Development of Young Men

PhytoestrogenCon claims that processing and fermentation of soybeans reduces the amount of phytoestrogens in them. He is being incredibly misleading here. Firstly, his own source shows that raw soybeans contain 59.63mg-145mg of isoflavones/100g [1]. The amount of isoflavones already varies wildly depending on where your soy beans come from. Furthermore, some soy products actually contain more isoflavones, such as soy flour which clocks in at 198.95mg/100g [2].Soy milk contains less isoflavones, but only because it contains less soy. 1 C of soy milk contains only 8g of soy, less than 1/10 the amount of soy you'd be eating if you ate 100 straight grams of soybean [3]. If you drank the equivalent in soymilk, you would be consuming 120.625mg of isoflavone, which is clearly on the high-end of the range Con's source gave. There doesn't seem to be any real loss of isoflavone, the difference comes down to soy concentration and which kind of soybean you use. Basically, my opponent's argument amounts to "eat less soy and you'll see less negative effects from soy". True, but irrelevant. The question now is, how much soy must one ingest to see its effects? The answer is, not much. According to The Independent:"The scientists, led by Dr Jorge Chavarro, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, questioned 99 men seeking help for fertility problems about their consumption of 15 soya-based foods.""Scientists found that even modest consumption of soya products, such as meat and dairy substitutes and bean curd, can have a significant impact on sperm count." [4]The article states that the average sperm count is between 80 and 120 million sperm per millilitre of semen, while the average for men who typically consume 1/2 a servings worth of soy (which is equal to about 1/2 cup of soy milk) a day had, on average, a 41 million/ml lower sperm count. This study only questioned them back as far as 3 months, so it's likely those with the highest soy intake had been consuming soy much longer.Con points out how not all adults can metabolize all isoflavones. This will be dealt with later.Con points out that natural estrogen is more potent than plant isoflavones. The implication here is that it might actually be beneficial to eat soy, as it would take the place of your bodies own estrogen. This argument only makes sense assuming you already have high estrogen levels (which is atypical of young men). Otherwise, you're needlessly stacking your cells with phytoestrogen. I don't think Con quite understands why people typically use SERM. SERM is used when a bodybuilder is on steroids (synthetic Testosterone) in order to mitigated the effects of the additional estrogen the body produces in response to this jolting increase in T-levels [5]. If you're not on steroids and you don't have a genetic chemical hormonal imbalance, you should not be taking SERM, as it's known to increase your chances of getting blood clots and certain kinds of cancer [6]. This is because, as my opponent pointed out, Estrogen is natural and necessary in the male body to a certain degree. Blocking these receptors needlessly is foolish and unnecessary. Since most SERMs are even weaker than soy isoflavones, why would needlessly docking soy isoflavones in your cells be any less foolish?The ScienceCon makes his biggest folly here.He points to a study done where 40mg of isoflavones a day for 2 months had no effect on the subjects' T-levels or sperm count. Con tries to exaggerate the amount of isoflavones used by comparing it to 2-3 "bowls of cereal" worth of soy milk. Firstly, according to con's own source, even the soybeans with the lowest levels of isoflavone (from Taiwan) still had 59.75mg. 40mg is not a negligible amount, but let's not pretend it's more than it is. Secondly, my opponent failed to consider that this study (and the other studies he mentioned) were done on adults. This one specifically was done on 14 men (much less than the 99 I cited) who’s ages were between 18-35 [7]. These are people either at the very end of their sexual development, or well past it. The reason why I specifically made this debate on male development and used studies done on neonatal animals and not the studies Con took it upon himself to "debunk", is because children are more susceptible to the effects of isoflavone binding than adults [8].So, let's examine what this study really says: a study done on 14 men found that 40mg of isoflavone a day for 2 months had no real effect on their T and sperm levels. In other words, a study done on a statistically insignificant amount of men found that a small amount of isoflavone for a short period of time doesn't screw with your sex organs -- assuming you're already fully developed. That's like saying "taking a puff from a cigarette once a day for a few weeks won't stunt your growth if you've already grown to your full height. This is why Con's studies are irrelevant -- they involve people who are no longer developing, so obviously soy isn't going to disrupt their development.By the way, the "debunking" this study does to my neonatal rat study is to point out that they used more isoflavone than the typical person consumes. This is a valid criticism of the study in general, but this is not a valid criticism for this debate because this is basically saying "eating less soy has less of an effect than eating more soy". The focus of this debate isn't over the degree of negative effects, but that this link exists period. Obviously eating less soy will result in less feminization, and less stab wounds to the belly will result in less internal bleeding too.CorrelationsCon points out that Asian men eat less soy than American men. This is true, but it supports my position, not his. When it comes to seeing the effects of soy-intake, duration of consumption trumps whomever is consuming the most right now. The Chinese have been eating soy for 1500 years, while American's have only been producing soy in notable quantities for a few decades. Given this, you would expect to see 2 things. 1, Asian men having smaller testes and lower sperm count. 2, American men (who now consume more soy than Asians) catching up to Asians via an abrupt run-away drop in T-levels and sperm count in the last few decades. As I pointed out in R2, this is exactly what's happening in America right now. Con states that the fertility rate in Asia is the same as in North America. This is, once again, incredibly misleading. Fertility rate =/= fertility. The fertility rate is meant to measure how many kids the average woman is expected to have, it does not measure difficulty in conception. So long as you aren't infertile, you can keep having sex until you conceive. Because of this reason, we have to actually look at testicle size, T-levels and sperm production to see if anything is going on. As it turns out, we have statistics on this and (unsurprisingly) they show smaller testes and lower sperm count in Asian men [9]. This is all that is relevant, which is why I never mentioned birth-rates in my argument. My opponent has set up a straw-man. Conclusion The “actual” science is not on Con's side. He takes far too many unwarranted liberties and twists the focus of the debate at every turn to make his case seem stronger than it is. He cherry-picked statistics to underestimate the amount of soy in soy-products in argument 1, cited studies which had nothing to do with development (and are therefore irrelevant to this debate's resolution) in argument 2, and completely straw-man-ed me in argument 3. Con's presentation is clever, but when you get down to the center of it, his arguments are as impotent as a vegan rat. Con has failed to debunk my argument. As such, the resoution remains affirmed.1. http://tinyurl.com... (pg 13) 2. ibid (pg 10) 3. http://tinyurl.com... 4. http://tinyurl.com...5. http://tinyurl.com... 6. http://tinyurl.com... 7. http://tinyurl.com... (pg 615)8. http://tinyurl.com...9. http://tinyurl.com...