Hacker News Reader

Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

Maple syrup has lead, rice has arsenic, apple seeds have cyanide and bananas contain radioactive potassium-40, soy phytoestrogens can mimic estrogen.

Fava beans are actually dangerous for some males but none of the other foods I mentioned are. Except for anyone like me soy is bad since I have hypothyroidism.

California is going to flip out going from food to food declaring they're dangerous

View on HN

There are risks associated with arsenic in rice. I've cut way back on my rice consumption. See [1], from Consumer Reports, for a table with suggested limits for adults and children (rice drinks, rice based cereals, etc.).

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...

Why is soy bad because you have hypothyroidism?

There are soy protiens that structurally mimic thyroid hormones and can bind at receptor sites, if I recall correctly.

Last I looked the modern research around soy has shown the estrogen concern to be a myth - along with it reducing testosterone in men. I was initially concerned about this when adding Soylent to my diet since I too had encountered these myths a decade ago and stopped eating soy.

I believe the concern here is most likely goitrogens rather than phytoestrogens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitrogen

Some years ago there was a product recall and class action here in Australia concerning one of the soy milk brands, with unusually high concentration of iodine.

I wouldn't call phytoestrogens in soy a myth since they are in it. There are quite a few scholarly articles/studies on it I breezed over a few mainly looking for thyroid related problems. But the articles do mention phytoestrogens. Does the myth you mention concern estrogen or phytoestrogens?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com