• OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I remember about a decade ago talking about tofu recipes with a colleague who lifted and ate a protein heavy diet.

    An older colleague heard us and warned us that eating tofu would cause you to have a surplus of estrogen and make you more feminine.

    He was telling this to a guy built like a brick shithouse who had eaten tons of soy protein for the better part of a decade.

    It’s that same old thing, something different comes along and some people just have to parrot anything that goes against that thing, even if it’s complete and utter horseshit

    • ornery_chemist@mander.xyz
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      9 hours ago

      Ugh I had an older colleague, a PhD organic chemist, who was absolutely convinced that soy would make me (m) infertile. I ordered tofu once when out to lunch and he would not stop warning me to “be careful” and to be mindful of starting a family and “you know those studies.” When I mentioned that the consensus was at best inconclusive and most likely there is no such link, he said that no, “they” definitely showed that excess soy is bad and that he worried about my reproductive health. Like dude even if eating tofu did cause reproductive health issues, mine is none of your goddamn business. On the other hand, the same guy is also convinced that BPA (another estrogen mimic used esp. in certain plastics) concerns are a total hoax because “they did bad science because their sample containers had BPA in them and it leached into the urine samples giving false positive.” Also something about the only evidence of it binding like estrogen was that someone glanced at a crystal structure and halfassedly thought it looked like it might fit and rolled with it for career reasons. Like, I don’t know, man, maybe a couple studies used containers made with BPA, but most probably didn’t. I haven’t read them, but I know you didn’t, either. Also, you’re literally a petrochemist, you know BPA is mostly used in polycarbonates, and lab plastics, especially for analytical work, are mostly polypropylene or polyethylene designed to avoid exactly this kind of leaching. Honestly.

    • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      As a human survival trait we need to find a way to shut down misinformation. Knowledge is our path to survival as an animal. Like ants have teamwork and building, wildebeest have speed, plants photosynthesise, humans learn.

      By creating and spreading misinformation you’re chipping away at pretty much the only thing that keeps us in existence.

      Bit of a broad-strokes extreme takeaway from your comment there, but it got to me.

      • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
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        2 hours ago

        I just left a thread about analog clocks being removed from schools because the kids can’t read them. The comments alone were quite telling on how many humans don’t want to learn much of anything anymore.

      • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        Yes, yes they do. Or, more accurately, they didn’t know that in the first place. These people are often just running on what are essentially old wives’ tales of things to be afraid of because it will hurt their masculinity or something.