More Food Type Things Out To Kill You: Tofu and Distilled Water

I wouldn't call the people I work with health nuts, but food comes up often, possibly because we talk over lunch, or maybe the average person just cares more and more about what exactly it is we are all putting in our body.  Where in the past you just assumed that if something is marketed as edible it is actually food, many people understand that processed food is saturated with strange chemicals, flavors and preservatives that take a long term toll on your body, because, well, your body needs actual food and gets confused by the foreign objects it finds boiling down in your stomach juices and passing along down the magical water slide we call the intestinal tract.  Substituting sugar and vegetable oil for other more expensive or high calorie ingredients can take its toll on your body, and the organic/raw/unprocessed food revolution we are still in the midst of has wizened many people to at least a basic understanding of nutrition and eating better = feeling better.

Recently in conversation with 2 people I work with have separately brought two things that even the very healthy regard as staples: distilled water and processed soybean or tofu.  Let me tell you what I've just found out:

Tofu has all sorts of shit going on with it.  I've known for a long time that legumes (family of plants including beans, soy, peas, peanuts) have had it in for people, namely from the lectins they contain, proteins that bind to your intestines and block them from absorbing other nutrients, leading to malnutrition, diarrhea, nausea, bloating and so on if beans are not properly soaked and cooked.  Tofu, or soy in general, also contain phytohormones that mimic human hormones, particularly estrogen.  These fake estrogens have been linked to increases in breast cancer for women, and decreased testosterone production (feminization) in men.  Apparently soy products can also cause imbalance in Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, and perhaps even other hormone function as well, considering how little we actually understand hormone function.  According to this interview, the problem is that they don't ferment tofu in North America and so this is what is causing the problem.  In Asia, where they have eaten tofu for ages, the tofu is properly fermented so does not affect them.  Nevertheless, it is not really a problem as long as you eat tofu in modertation.

Distilled water holds a different problem...while the water has been purified of all the bad things that can be found in water, the distilling process also gets rid of all the minerals that are natural in spring water, for example.  Our body can absorb minerals from food, and other sources like multivitamins, but not to the same extent as vitamins that are already dissolved in water.  Drinking distilled water gets even worse than that...imagine water as being little containers that can hold bits of solids.  In distilled water those containers are empty, and water is ALWAYS trying to fill those containers.  That means when you drink distilled water, it is actually leaching minerals from your body and into the water, which gets flushed through your body faster than regular water.  This study from the World Health Organization reports that studies of distilled water on rats have negative effects on their digestive systems, and leads to increased water intake and more frequent urination.  According to the report, the most important loss of minerals is in calcium and magnesium, and distilled water should be remineralized to be considered safe drinking water.

There is no need to panic, in moderation neither of these things will kill you, only after a protracted period of time is it considered a health risk.  A varied diet can help you avoid particular problems with foods that are a known health problem, or even with foods that could be found problematic in the future.