Dear lemmy, someone very close to my heart is starting to fall into conspiracy theories. It’s heartbreaking. Among other things, he has now told me that soy beans are not supposed to be consumed by human beings and is convinced that despite the literal centuries of human soy bean cultivation and consumption, we shouldn’t eat it or anything derived from it for this reason (ie tofu, soy sauce, etc…evidence that soy is present in other common foods doesn’t seem to register with him).
I don’t even know where he got this information from and can’t find a single source to back it up (even disingenuously). I’ve tried explaining to him that sure, in its original state it’s not edible, but undergoes processing (LIKE MANY OTHER FOODS) to become edible. And that this has gone on since at least the 11th century, so it’s not like Big Soy is trying to poison the little people.
He’s normally a very reasonable and intelligent person, and I don’t know how to reach him. I thought it might be helpful to show him where these myths have come from with hard data sources to prove it. He seems open to the possibility, so I don’t think he’s a lost cause yet!
Help?
Soy makes a good target for a conspiracy theory, because it’s in everything.
This ubiquity heightens its danger: your kids are eating it, you’re eating it, the ink on your cereal box is soy, the glue in your shoes is soy… it’s all around us, man!
Secondly, being everywhere gives the appearance of an elaborate, omnipresent plot. Like Bill Gates and his microchips, the cabal wants to get their soy into you one way or another!
They eat this kind of shit up.
The fact that hippies are associated with soy milk strikes the right notes for hating soy.
The belief that soy acts like estrogen in the body and will feminize men - that hits all the right notes for hating soy.
Americans don’t give a shit that Asians have been eating and even living on soy for centuries, because they denigrate those cultures, seeing them as hive minds without individuality. That makes soy even more hatable.
So if you’re going to fall down a rabbit hole at all, this seems like a deep one.
The only possible saving grace for soy is that there are a hell of a lot of soy farmers in America. And we know conspiracy nuts live down-home regular folk like farmers. Long as they ain’t organic or nuthin.
Plus it is highly desired by Asian countries like China, they import huge amounts from Brazil, so any China paranoia gets tossed into the mix.