Re: Soybean curd increases Alzheimer's disease risk by 2.4 times

Study of Japanese men in Hawaii.


Here we have an excerpt from SOY AND DEMENTIA by John Robbins, author of "Diet for a New America", "The Food Revolution", "May All Be Fed", and "Reclaiming Our Health"; founder of EarthSave International.

The health benefits of soy products have been well established. But your friends, and now you, have felt the reverberations from a surprising study that was published in April 2000, in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

The study, conducted in Hawaii by Lon White, M.D., and his associates, was part of the Honolulu Heart Study. Looking at the diets and the risk of dementia of Japanese men residing in Hawaii, the study found that men who ate the most tofu during their mid-40s to mid-60s were more likely to have dementia and Alzheimer's as they grew older.

The correlation between tofu and cognitive decline was strong, and could not be explained by confounding factors like age, education, and obesity. In this study, men who had eaten two or more servings of tofu per week in midlife were 2.4 times as likely as men who rarely or never ate tofu to become senile or forgetful by old age. Even the wives of men who ate tofu showed more signs of dementia. White and the other researchers said the brains of the tofu-eaters seemed to have aged more rapidly. By the time the men reached their 80s and 90s, the tofu-eater's brains seemed to be the equivalent of non-tofu eater's brains that were five years older.