Henry Clark of the West County Toxics Coalition set the tone for the evening event: “The shoreline belongs to the people, but the community has never had access,” he pointed out. “Chevron’s had access; the Rod and Gun Club has had access, but we haven’t.” Clark said if new industry comes to the area, he wants it clean and green. “We’re done with polluting smokestacks.”

The Natural Heritage Institute’s Rich Walkling celebrated Richmond’s 32-mile-long bayshore treasure. The largest eelgrass bed in the entire bay is just off the North Richmond shoreline; several endangered species, including the California clapper rail, live in the marshes. Walkling compared the marshes to lungs that filter pollutants as they produce oxygen for the community of North Richmond. And he broached an unpleasant subject: how the General Plan might address sea level rise, as some of the land along the shoreline will probably be lost.

Robin Freeman of the East Bay Watershed Center suggested that the city could purchase private properties and develop them with small, locally owned businesses rather than encouraging big-box developers; he also suggested moving polluting businesses off the shoreline and creating a shoreline protection zone. Citizens for Eastshore State Park’s Robert Cheasty urged that the North Richmond shoreline be preserved as part of the East Bay shoreline park system. Cheasty, the former mayor of Albany, spoke of the decades it took to get the land along the bay in Albany and Berkeley preserved as parkland and admitted that “there is no end to this battle.”

In Richmond that could be an understatement. While activists shot down a container port slated for Wildcat Marsh (see Fall/Winter 2006), City Councilmember Tom Butt told the crowd that a new proposal for a port has just emerged—this one would fill in the old Santa Fe Channel. “[The port proposal] is like a giant balloon that’s being squeezed,” Butt quipped. “It keeps popping up again and again.”

Other highlights of the evening were the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Ann Riley, who described the fight in the ’80s to save Wildcat-San Pablo creeks from being imprisoned in a concrete channel as “flood control.” A group composed mostly of African-American neighbors came together and fought the Army Corps of Engineers on behalf of the creek. Riley called it “the people’s plan,” and she urged this new generation to come with its own plan to save Richmond’s bayshore.

The ever-elegant cofounder of Save the Bay, Sylvia McLoughlin, waited until the end of the evening to speak. McLoughlin, who just turned 90, suggested that now is the time to think big. “The Richmond shoreline planning process could be a model for other cities, a key component of the East Bay shoreline park system,” said McLoughlin. “Richmond’s shoreline can be an economic and aesthetic asset to the region.”

General plan consultant Daniel Iacofano pointed out that assumptions create false conflicts. “The economy and the environment do not need to be in opposition,” he said. “Businesses want to locate where there is quality of life and quality of environment. The stage is set for doing that here.” Iacofano cited studies demonstrating that property values increase near parks and open space, and said that over three quarters of a trillion dollars is spent on outdoor recreation and ecotourism each year. He suggested that Richmond tap into those dollars by “raising the identity of its shoreline, marketing and branding it as an environmental resource, a destination.”

And that was music to the new mayor’s ears. She told the crowd that she saw a “refreshing sharp difference” that tells her Richmond’s citizens want to develop in a different way. “It should say something to city staff,” she concluded.

But will it? Idealistic residents have demonstrated decades of staying power. But Richmond’s officials, elected and hired, often give a nod to impassioned speeches as they conduct business as usual. While the mayor and councilmember Butt stayed for the duration, the rest of the councilmembers bowed out early—or didn’t show up at all. The city can hire the best possible consultants to write the best possible plan, but is there a will to implement it? One thing is certain: Richmond’s citizen activists have dealt themselves into the game.

It turns out that California’s wild turkeys are of the Rio Grande subspecies (M. gallopavo intermedia), caught wild in Texas and brought here by the Department of Fish and Game in the 1970s and 1980s, for the benefit of hunters. It also turns out that like the rogue’s gallery of other critters and plants we’ve introduced into our unique and ecologically sensitive region, turkeys may not be so harmless.

Daniel Gluesenkamp, a restoration ecologist with Audubon, has been studying the wild gobblers since 2002 on the nonprofit’s Sonoma County Bouverie Preserve. Gluesenkamp set up two sites, each divided into two plots—one with a cage excluding turkeys, another in which turkeys were able to enter and roam freely. He added acorns and bay nuts to the plots to see how rapidly they disappeared, and used pitfall traps (cups full of a brine solution set into the ground) to capture ground-dwelling invertebrates. The difference in the sites was dramatic, says Gluesenkamp: “When we had turkeys in a plot, we lost acorns at a rate four times that of the turkey-free plot; bay nuts were lost at a rate three times the turkey-free plot, and there was a ten-fold increase in soil disturbance.”

What does that mean over time? “You get a whole bunch of bare dirt instead of nice old oak leaf litter,” says Gluesenkamp. “Some things—ruderal weeds like thistles—will probably love the soil disturbance. More sensitive native plants probably won’t.”

But even more interesting says Gluesenkamp, was what fell—or didn’t fall—into the pitfall traps. “There was a big decrease in the number of ground-dwelling invertebrates on the plots where turkeys were not excluded,” he explains. “Plots with turkeys had less [bug] diversity and became less diverse over time; the turkey-free plots were more diverse, and increased in diversity from year to year.”

Why does this matter? “The little ground-dwelling things most of us don’t even know the names of or care about are probably being impacted by wild turkeys,” he says. “It might not be important, but it might be—we just don’t know. It probably is important to whoever eats [the bugs], though.”

Gluesenkamp thinks preserving biodiversity—including all of the small things—matters a lot. “They evolved here. They’re part of the system whether we fully understand it or not,” he says. Native birds such as California quail scratch in the soil and eat these same bugs, adds Gluesenkamp. Another worry is that omnivorous turkeys—they scarf down lizards, seeds, native plants, weeds, bugs, and even occasionally smaller birds and other delicacies—could be eating rare or endangered critters like the California red-legged frog. But it’s hard to prove. It’s tough enough to find rare species, let alone observe them being eaten by a turkey, says Gluesenkamp.

Fish and Game’s wild turkey introductions of decades past were so successful that the birds are now common throughout California west of the Sierra Nevada, having successfully reproduced and expanded their range. No one knows exactly how many wild turkeys live in the state, but they could number in the hundreds of thousands, says Gluesenkamp; Fish and Game has stopped the introductions. “We do know they are increasing, and the population hasn’t leveled off yet,” he adds.

Gluesenkamp compares the turkey invasion to that of wild pigs. “There’s nothing evil or innately bad about them, but they are something we’ve introduced that disrupts the system, and if we want to keep diversity, we need to manage their populations. Hopefully we can have turkeys and calachortus.”

Meanwhile, the reintroduction of turkeys to eastern North America—where they were native before being overhunted and almost driven to extinction—is a success story up there with that of the California condor, says Gluesenkamp. “But some things aren’t meant to be everywhere,” he says, “the same way we don’t want to plant trees in something that’s supposed to be a grassland.”

The University seems non-plussed. “There’s a lot of misinfor-mation out there about these oaks,” says spokesperson Marie Felde. “They are not ancient.” Ancient or old, oaks are home to 110 species of birds, 105 mammal species, and 58 species of amphibians and reptiles, according to the Oak Foundation’s Janet Cobb. “It’s a nice remnant grove that is rejuvenating itself,” says Cobb. “It seems like the university would want to pay attention to what it’s teaching in environmental science courses.” In late January, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller granted an injunction preventing UC from bringing out the bulldozers until the case goes to trial—likely within the next three to six months.

After several years of consuming various forms of soy nearly every day, something wasn’t right. I felt reasonably fit, but somewhere along the line I’d stopped menstruating. I couldn’t figure out why my stomach became so upset after eating edamame or why I was often moody and bloated. It didn’t occur to me at the time to blame soy, heart-protector and miracle food.

When I began studying holistic health and nutrition, I kept running across risks associated with eating soy. Endocrine disruption? Check. Digestive problems? Check. I researched soy’s deleterious effects on thyroid, fertility, hormones, sex drive, digestion, and even its potential to contribute to certain cancers. For every study that proved there was a connection between soy and reduced disease risk, others cropped up to challenge these claims. What was going on?

“Studies showing the dark side of soy date back 100 years,” says Kaayla Daniel, PhD, clinical nutritionist and author of The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food.Ê “The 1999 FDA-approved health claim pleased big business, despite massive evidence showing risks associated with soy, and against the protests of the FDA’s own top scientists. Soy is a global four-billion-dollar industry that’s taken these health claims to the bank.” Besides heart health, the industry says that soy consumption can alleviate symptoms associated with menopause, reduce the risk of certain cancers, and lower levels of LDL, the “bad” cholesterol.

Epidemiological studies have shown that Asians, particularly in Japan and China, have a much lower incidence of breast and prostate cancer than in the US, and many of these studies trace the results back to a traditional diet that includes soy. Daniel says a common misconception is that Asians are consuming more soy than they actually are; soy accounts for only about 15 percent of their total calories, or nine grams per day. Asian diets include small amounts of primarily fermented soy products, such as miso, natto, and tempeh, and some tofu. By contrast, in the US, processed soy food snacks or shakes can contain over 20 grams of soy protein in one serving.

“There is important information on the cancer protective values of soy,” says Ed Bauman, PhD, clinical nutritionist, head of the Bauman Clinic in Sebastopol and director of Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition, who cautions against painting the bean with a broad brush. “As with any food, it can have benefits in one system and detriments in another. If there is an individual sensitivity, one may have an adverse response to soy. And not all soy is alike,” he adds, referring to processing methods and quality.

Soy is indigenous to Eastern Asia, where it was once considered toxic and used only as a cover crop. It was eventually fermented for better digestibility; it had long been known that soy caused extreme digestive distress if consumed raw or undercooked. Fermenting soy deactivates these harmful constituents and creates health-promoting probiotics, the good bacteria our bodies need to maintain digestive and overall wellness. Daniels mentions that Asian populations may have had success with soy because they are consuming primarily the fermented forms.

As soy moved west, it became a new addition to the diets of Europeans and Americans. “Soy is not a native food to North America or Europe, and I think you have issues when you move food from one part of the world to another,” Bauman says. “We fare better when we eat according to our ethnicity. I think soy is a viable food, but we need to look at how it’s used and maybe consider using other food stock that’s more indigenous.”

Formerly considered a small-scale poverty food, soy exploded onto the American market. Studies—funded mostly by the industry—began singing the praises of soy’s ability to lower disease risk while absolving one from guilt associated with meat consumption. “The soy industry has come a long way from where some hippies would start boiling up the beans,” says Daniel. “It’s very much about the marketing.”

Marketing includes spotlighting philanthropic efforts. The soy industry would like us to believe that it can alleviate the world’s hunger problem by introducing soy to third world countries. “Rather than encourage people to grow a variety of indigenous things, the industry goes in and basically replaces wheat, lentils, vegetables and chickens and goats with soybean plants,” Daniel says. Most often those plants are genetically modified to withstand spraying with herbicides such as Roundup and Partner. The aim is to reduce competition by weeds and grasses, a boon for agribusiness.

Large farm or small, the environmental effects of introducing a non-indigenous crop can be detrimental. “In Argentina and Brazil, most of the big farms are eating up the rainforest for GM soy, and they’re using massive amounts of pesticide,” Daniel says. “People in the surrounding areas are developing all sorts of health problems. They’re busy exporting the soy to places like China rather than focusing on growing their own food.”

By now, the industry has discovered ways to use every part of the bean for profit. Soy oil has become the base for most vegetable oils; soy lecithin, the waste product left over after the soybean is processed, is used as an emulsifier; soy flour appears in baked and packaged goods; different forms of processed soy protein are added to everything from animal feed to muscle-building protein powders. “Soy protein isolate was invented for use in cardboard,” says Daniel. “It was approved for packaging but it was never given GRAS [generally regarded as safe] status. It hasn’t actually been approved as a food ingredient.”

Soy is everywhere in our food supply, as the star in cereals and health-promoting foods or hidden discreetly in processed foods. Even if you read every label and avoid cardboard boxes, you’ll likely find soy in your supplements and vitamins (look out for vitamin E derived from soy oil), in foods such as canned tuna, soups, sauces, breads, meat (injected under poultry skin), and chocolate, and in pet food and body care products. It may hide in your tofu dogs under such aliases as textured vegetable protein (TVP), hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or just plain lecithin.

Extensive processing to hydrolyze soy protein into vegetable protein produces excitotoxins such as glutamate (think MSG) and aspartate (a component of aspartame) as byproducts. Food-borne excitotoxins are ubiquitous in processed foods and cause brain cell death.

Soy is one of the most allergenic foods, in addition to wheat, corn, eggs, milk, nuts, and shellfish. Most people equate food allergies with anaphylaxis, or a severe emergency immune response, but it is possible to have a subclinical sensitivity to a food. These lead to health problems over time and are exacerbated by a lack of variety so common in today’s American diet.

“People can do an empirical food sensitivity test by eliminating the food for a period of time and reintroducing it to see if there’s an immune response, but most don’t do this,” says Bauman. “Genetically modified soy is the most problematic, and that’s probably what most people are eating if they’re not paying attention. People can develop a sensitivity to a food that has antigens or bacteria not originally in the food chain, as is the case with GM foods.”

Agri-giant Monsanto obtained FDA approval to market GM soy in 1996, and by 2004, a staggering 85 percent of the US crop was genetically modified. Daniel says, “One question I get all the time is, ‘What if I only eat organic soy?’ Their assumption is that GM soy is problematic and organic is fine. Certainly, organic is better, but the bottom line is that soybeans naturally contain plant estrogens, toxins and anti-nutrients, and you can’t remove those.”

Anti-nutrients block enzymes needed for digestion. Soy’s naturally occurring phytates block absorption of essential minerals such as zinc. This is most worrisome for vegans and vegetarians consuming soy as their main source of protein, and for women in menopause who may be further upping their soy intake through supplements.

The highest risk population is infants. “The reason,” says Daniel, “is because it’s the only thing they’re eating, they’re a very small size, and they’re at a key stage developmentally. The estrogens in soy will affect the hormonal development of these children, and it will certainly affect their growing brains, reproductive systems, and thyroids.” Soy formula also contains large amounts of manganese, which has been linked to ADD and neurotoxicity in infants. Such effects prompted an investigation by the Israeli Health Ministry that resulted in an advisory stating that infants should avoid soy formula altogether.

Soy contains phytochemicals—plant nutrients with disease-fighting activity—called isoflavones, which act as plant estrogens (phytoestrogens) in humans. Studies claim that isoflavones can mimic the body’s own estrogens, raising a woman’s estrogen levels, which fall after menopause, causing hot flashes and other symptoms. On the other hand, the phytoestrogenic effects of isoflavones may also block the body’s estrogens, which can help reduce a woman’s high estrogen levels, therefore reducing her risk for breast or uterine cancer before menopause. High estrogen levels have been linked to cancers of the reproductive system in women.

Isoflavones are thought to be useful in warding off cancer due to their antioxidant effect, neutralizing cancer-causing free radicals in the body. Although soy’s isoflavones may have an adaptogenic effect—contributing to an estrogen-boosting or -blocking effect where needed—they may also have the potential to promote hormone-sensitive cancers in some people. Studies on isoflavones’ effects on human estrogen levels are conflicting and it is possible that they affect people differently. In men, soy has been shown to lower testosterone levels and sex drive, according to Daniel.

Bauman believes processed soy foods are problematic but maintains that soy has beneficial hormone-mediating effects. “People are largely convenience-driven. We’re looking at this whole processed food convenience market and we’re making generalizations about a plant. Is soy the problem, or is it the handling and packaging and processing of the plant that’s the problem?”

“Primary sources of food are a good thing,” Bauman states. “Once there was a bean, but then it got cooked and squeezed and the pulp was separated out, and it’s heated and processed for better shelf-life and mouth feel. Soymilk is second or third level in terms of processing.”

Bauman’s eating-for-health approach entails ingesting a variety of natural and seasonal unprocessed whole foods, including soy in moderation, tailored to one’s biochemical individuality and sensitivities. “Using soy as a part of a diet can bring relief for perimenopause, for example,” he says. “Throw out the soy and you throw out the isoflavones.” (It is possible to obtain phtyoestrogens to a lesser extent from other foods, such as lima beans or flax.) “The literature is extensive on the benefit of soy, and that should always be stated, just as the hazards should be. That’s science. These studies are not ridiculous or contrived, but take a look at them. Who’s funding them?” asks Bauman.

“There are a lot of problems with these studies,” Daniel says, adding that the 1999 heart health claim was an industry-funded initiative. “My position is that even if there is positive information, and even if these studies are well designed, we need to weigh that against the fact that we’ve also got really good studies showing the dangers. The precautionary principle states better safe than sorry. Possible benefits are far outweighed by proven risks.”

Dietary needs are different for everyone and change according to the body’s needs. Daniel and Bauman both agree on the benefits of variety. “As a clinical nutritionist, my experience is that people who have a varied diet tend to not get into trouble,” says Daniel.

“We like to demonize certain foods in this society,” says Bauman. “If you want to find fault, you’ll find it. The bottom line is, what is a healthy diet?”

Kaayla Daniel: I work mostly with mid-life women, and that is a population likely to eat a lot of soy and drink a lot of soymilk. They’re even taking soy isoflavone supplements because they’ve heard that it’s going to help them through menopause. A lot of these women are very intelligent and educated, and unfortunately they get this idea that if a little of something might be good, then they should do a lot of it. They start doing a whole lot of soy, and they start gaining weight, feeling fatigued, they get lethargic and depressed, and when they go to a regular doctor, they’re told, “Well, what do you expect, you’re getting old,” and that this is typical of menopause. In fact, the symptoms are almost entirely coming from that change in their diet, which had to do with soy.

How much soy does the average person consume in a day?

Someone on a junk food diet is getting soy flour in their fast-food burger bun, soy protein in the burger itself, and soy oil in the fries; soy is in every one of these products because it’s cheap and abundant. You’ll find soy hidden in so many foods, and these small quantities add up.

People often start by drinking a lot of soymilk. If they are doing supplements, they can be getting really high doses and that’s where it starts to get very scary. Even scientists working for the soy industry will say they support soy food but do not support use of soy supplements, so I think that’s something just about everyone has agreed upon. It is so dangerous at such a high level, and it’s harming many people.

Women say [drinking soymilk] makes them feel good. Most soymilks have a lot of sugar, so they might be getting a sugar hit. The other thing that may happen is with the thyroid. Short-term, soy may stimulate the thyroid so they’ll feel better, but the thyroid gets stressed out from extra stimulation and goes long-term into hypothyroidism.

How does marketing affect soy consumption?

It’s very much about marketing. If we look back, the soybean was used in this country for soy oil. They take apart the bean and take out the oil and turn it in into margarines and shortenings and all those liquid vegetable oils. Once the oil is out, what they had left over was a whole lot of protein.

The USDA has spent so much money and many decades researching how to use soy in animal feed so that the animals will stay healthy. Some of the problems they were running into were that the animals were having birth defects; they were having fertility problems; they were dying prematurely on soy feed. The USDA was looking into what vitamins, minerals, or amino acids they needed to add and what is the maximum amount of soy they can use in animal feed before the animals have too many problems. They don’t care that the animals would have thyroid problems and get fat because that’s their objective anyway. Soy is not a natural food for an animal. Only so much soy can be used in animal feeds before there’s big problems. For instance, with poultry feed, it’s 25 percent.

How should people interpret the conflicting information on studies about soy and cancer?

The soy industry has really been running with the recent study where they asked people what they’d been eating during childhood and teenage years; women with the highest soy intake were the ones with the lowest rates of breast cancer. There are a lot of problems with that kind of study. First, if I started to interview you right about what you ate last Tuesday, could you tell me and tell me how much? When people are talking to an interviewer, they like to say what the interviewer wants to hear; there’s a potential for bias. In the latest study, it was only like two servings per week and in all probability it was not things like soy energy bars or shake powders. It was miso soup or tofu. Maybe they were a traditional family eating a lot of foods from scratch. There are other foods and other factors you could get these benefits from.

Is increased soy consumption a reason that girls are hitting puberty as early as eight or nine?

There’s a good reason to think that soy formula is part of that problem, but we also have environmental estrogens and pesticides and plastics and supermarket meats, xenoestrogens. Soy may be the one thing we can completely avoid.

What provoked the Israeli Health Ministry warning on soy foods?

The Israeli Health Ministry issued an advisory that babies should not get soy formula, and that children to age 18 should eat soy no more than once per day, three times per week maximum. Adults should exercise caution due to the adverse effects on fertility and increased breast cancer risk. It’s a pretty strong statement and a good start.

Were they seeing problems or was it a precautionary measure?

Both. It started a few years ago when several babies were hospitalized with severe beriberi and brain damage because of a soy infant formula that was deficient in vitamin B1. The manufacturer had gotten the idea that why should they add extra B vitamins if soy is such a perfect food, already high in B vitamins? They didn’t understand that babies need added B1 and that processing affects vitamins. National alerts were issued, the product recalled, and all the babies on soy formula immediately got injections of B1.

That incident caused the Israeli Health Ministry to start looking into soy formula. They formed a large committee including toxicologists, oncologists, pediatricians, and other experts, reviewed the literature, and decided that there are some risks. The Israeli soy industry has protested mightily and threatened to sue the government, but the health ministry maintained its position.

Daycare centers have been told to cut back on soy foods. They were [serving soy products] every day and now they’re doing it three times a week. I would say that’s still a little too much for children, but it’s a big start.

How much soy should people consume, if at all?

I’ll use the numbers the Israelis used. But of course some people are allergic to soy; some are sensitive to soy; some have thyroid problems already. Those people probably should avoid it. Then there’s the issue of what types of soy are we talking about. I still enjoy miso soup.

Which soy product is the worst?

The biggest problem is soymilk. Those with lactose intolerance are thinking that soymilk is a great alternative, and they’re drinking a lot and getting a huge dose of isoflavones. If you’re drinking soymilk, you’re going to have a problem, or most people will sooner or later. We’re all different—some people will start having problems in a day, and some people will think they’re fine and a year later things will start to go downhill.

Drinking just one glass a day of soymilk will give someone the level of plant estrogens that has hurt the thyroids of healthy Japanese men and women. Most people are doing several glasses, plus the soy protein energy bars and the bags of edamame.

If people are worried about calcium, they could try coconut milk, which has the calcium, magnesium, and potassium they’ll get from cow’s milk and is a wonderful tonic. I don’t recommend rice milk due to the sugar content. It’s still a heavily processed food. Many lactose-intolerant people find they can tolerate raw milk that hasn’t been pasteurized, which kills the enzymes needed for digestion.

Before they started using soy protein isolate they used soy flour, and that gave babies very bad gas. Once they started using soy protein isolate they were having fewer problems in terms of gas and overall digestability. Babies in the short term seemed to be doing better. The problems with hydrolyzed plant protein include that the processing creates MSG and other excitotoxins, and we get that with soy protein isolate as well.

Also, the protein is unstable when soybeans are cooked a long time. It’s a very tricky thing to not cook them too long or to cook them long enough—it varies from bean to bean. Some of the USDA studies were going on for years: how to do that processing to make it work. Then they finally gave up. What’s happened is some of the things they tried to get rid of they’re now marketing as things that can prevent cancer or prevent problems. They take something that’s bad and turn it into something that’s good. Every time they remove a component of soy, they have another thing they can sell.

In Kenya, the soy industry is talking to bakers, teaching them to use soy flour in baked goods, and down in Johannesburg they’re working on using soy protein shake powders to help AIDS patients. When the tsunami hit, the soy industry was right there giving people assistance and free soy products. Rather than help the people pick up the pieces and get their small farms back together, they’re replacing the local foods with something that’s global.

WhiteWave Foods, which makes Silk Soymilk, started out as a small company in Boulder, but it is now owned by Dean Foods. You see it in supermarkets everywhere. And Dean Foods—you don’t have to look very far to see what kind of products they’re selling. Kellogg and Dean and Con-Agra—all these big companies own what used to be small-time companies. New standards for organics means quality assurance goes down. We need to be looking at buying locally. Transportation alone has a very serious toll on the environment.

Do you think we should have a warning label here in the US?

That’s the next step to take. I will be involved with three petitions to the FDA. The first will be to remove the current health claim that soy prevents heart disease. It’s been on foods since November 1999, and in fact, soy food sales went from less than a billion to $4 billion between 1999 and 2004. They had planned to get a “soy prevents cancer” claim but we put a stop to that. Last year, the American Heart Association retracted its position on soy. They’re now saying soy does not prevent heart disease or lower cholesterol. Secondly we’re going to petition the FDA to remove the GRAS status for soy protein isolate. The third will have to do with putting warning labels on soy foods.

Do you think that labeling will be a reality in the US?

We’re hopeful our petitions work but the other part is that we’re bringing attention to the issues. What amazes me is that so many vegetarians and vegans will say that the FDA would never have approved a “soy prevents heart disease” claim unless there was good strong evidence. Hello! This is the same FDA that gave us Vioxx and aspartame!

I’m sure in Berkeley in the ’60s there were little companies that made tofu and soymilk, and people still believe soy is that kind of food. What they’re not getting is that we have Big Pharma and now we have Big Soy. It is a global industry. The industry is whining because growth has slowed. They’re hoping for the next big product. They had high hopes that soy protein sales would go from four to eight billion by 2007 with the “soy prevents cancer” health claim, but we killed that for them.

Your child is growing from an immobile bobble-head to a full-fledged being. He begins to pull himself up and take those first few tentative steps that quickly turn into an endless run. When he starts walking like an overworked cowboy, you don’t take much notice—after all, most toddlers are slightly bowlegged. But then he stops running as much, and his energy seems low. One day he suddenly has trouble standing up. When your pediatrician informs you your child has rickets, you feel as if you’ve been slammed over the head. Rickets, in the 21st century, in the Bay Area: this is the experience of some parents who did everything right.

According to information released by the Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Oakland, 56 children suffering from rickets have been treated over the past five years. The study, led by Dr. Suruchi Bhatia, Medical Director of Endocrinology, is one of the few tracking what had been thought to be a virtually eradicated condition.

Rickets, or childhood osteomalacia, rose out of the smoke of the Industrial Revolution, hitting epidemic proportions early in the 20th century. Caused primarily by a vitamin D deficiency, rickets is a softening and weakening of the bones that leads to bone pain, skeletal deformities, increased risk of bone fracture, weakening of the muscles, muscle cramps, dental deformities, and delayed growth. In its most severe form, rickets can cause spasms of the feet, hands, and larynx, difficulty breathing, and convulsions.

It was noted as early as the late 18th century that sunbathing cured rickets. But when mass populations moved to the cities to work in factories, the discovery did little to curb the disease. Smog and high-rises blocked the sun, and children often worked long hours alongside their parents in artificially lit factories. It is estimated that 80 percent of children living in Boston in 1900 had rickets.

In the 1920s, a series of experiments tracking the effects of ultraviolet light on foods fed to rats concluded that irradiated food could produce the same safeguard against rickets as sun exposure. The food irradiation process (later to be replaced by vitamin D synthesis) was patented in 1924 and allowed children to meet their vitamin D needs through fortified milk and bread. “Seemingly overnight, the imminent threat of epidemic disease dwindled to a half-forgotten historical event,” reads a National Academy of Sciences article.

Half-forgotten but not gone. The 56 cases reported by Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Oakland are not out of the ordinary; over a similar period, Children’s Hospital of the Central Coast treated 47 children with rickets, and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford saw 117 children with a primary diagnosis of rickets and another 647 with a secondary diagnosis. While these numbers are alarming, they represent just a small fraction of rickets incidences. According to Kelley Scanlon of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospital discharge data show only the most severe cases of rickets, probably about 20 percent of the total cases that occur, while 80 percent of children with rickets are treated by their physicians.

Because many children with rickets are treated locally and it is not a communicable disease (and therefore not tracked by Public Health Offices), it is extremely difficult to gauge its prevalence. Says Scanlon, “There has been a lot of stuff in the literature about ‘the rise of rickets,’ but we’ve never been able to confirm an actual rise. We do know there has been an increase in reports, and that was a concern to us.” The reports were worrisome enough that in 2003 the American Academy of Pediatrics began recommending vitamin D supplementation for all breast-fed infants.

Whether or not an official study proves an upward trend, many believe that the escalation of rickets reports represents a deeper, more ubiquitous problem. Dr. Laura Bachrach, Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, who has seen several severe rickets cases over the years, believes that the figures are just “the tip of the iceberg because we haven’t been routinely screening children to see how many kids in the Bay Area are vitamin D deficient.”

Why now? If rickets all but disappeared in the 1920s, why the upsurge?

One reason is that vitamin D is not naturally present in most foods, including breast milk, and people are increasingly cutting dairy and milk—the most commonly fortified products—from their diets. According to Scanlon, “We have talked to parents of children with rickets in the past, and these were highly educated parents doing the best they could, breastfeeding their child, and some of these children were weaned onto a soy beverage. These parents were very upset that no clinician, no healthcare provider, ever told them that that soy beverage didn’t have vitamin D and that there really weren’t very many other vitamin D sources in the diet, and that the child was at risk of vitamin D deficiency.”

With the common knowledge that more darkly pigmented children require more sunlight to synthesize vitamin D in the skin, increasing a risk of deficiency (nearly 75 percent of rickets cases at Children’s Hospital in Oakland were African-American children), and considering that as many as 80 percent of African-Americans are lactose-intolerant, one has to wonder at the logic of fortifying milk to combat vitamin D deficiency.

African-American children aren’t the only ones lacking Vitamin D. Unless you are drinking four glasses of milk a day, or eating fish liver oils, you’re probably not getting enough vitamin D in your diet. With the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Skin Cancer Foundation leading an effective campaign against the sun, you are likely not getting enough Vitamin D from the body’s natural ability to produce it, either. Even an SPF 8 sunscreen will prevent the absorption of UV light that triggers your body’s vitamin D production. “People believe that as little as 30 minutes exposing the face, arms, and hands without sunscreen on is sufficient to make enough of your own vitamin D, but parents are being very conservative about keeping babies out of the light. Oftentimes they don’t get that requisite sunlight,” says Dr. Bachrach.

This conservative approach to sun exposure is nurtured by a constant bombardment of well-funded messages that sun equals skin cancer. Consider this imperative from the Skin Cancer Foundation: “Babies under six months should never be exposed to the sun.”ÊTheir response to healthcare professionals and vitamin D experts who suggest a mere five to ten minutes of sun exposure is unequivocal: “Most dermatologists and cancer groups including the Skin Cancer Foundation have argued strongly against this ‘solution,’ since all unprotected UV exposure contributes to cumulative skin damage, accelerating aging, and increasing our lifetime risk of skin cancer.” While the Skin Cancer Foundation’s annual report is not available on its web site, the list of corporate sponsorships (including a Corporate Leadership Council, Cosmetic Industry Board, Corporate Council, and International Corporate Council) is a virtual who’s who of the sunscreen industry.

Powerful messages have a powerful impact. “For 30 years the dermatology community has been unchallenged in terms of telling people they should never be exposed to direct sunlight,” says Michael Holick, a leading vitamin D expert and professor of medicine, physiology, and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine. “It’s had a devastating consequence, which is to cause severe vitamin D deficiency throughout the entire population of the world, including the United States. This has been a major issue for pregnant women because a prenatal vitamin contains 400 units of vitamin D, which is 40 percent of what they need. Most humans depend on the sun for their vitamin D requirement—90 to 95 percent was typically coming from sunlight. If they’re getting 40 percent of what they need and they’re not getting any sunlight, they’re likely to be vitamin D deficient.” In fact, in a recent study of 40 mother/infant pairs at Boston University Medical Center, Dr. Holick and his colleagues found that 80 percent of mothers and 76 percent of infants (at birth) were vitamin D deficient.

Dr. Holick, who was fired from his secondary position as professor of dermatology at Boston University for advocating “sensible sun exposure,” estimates that from 30 to 50 percent of all children and adults in the United States are at risk of vitamin D deficiency. The consequences of this deficiency go far beyond rickets. According to Dr. Holick, adequate vitamin D decreases risk of type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. It also lowers insulin resistance, a major contributor to heart disease and regulates calcium levels which, in turn, help to regulate blood pressure. It is even a risk reduction factor for malignant melanoma. In fact, research indicates that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer.

Of course, no one is suggesting baking in the sun in the name of vitamin D production. And sun exposure has its limitations: skin tone, latitude, season, cloud cover, and pollution all affect UV absorption. In the Bay Area, for example, our northern latitude means little vitamin D synthesis three to six months out of the year. However, a combination of sensible sun exposure when possible, and fortified foods or supplements when UV light is scarce or during the winter, can go a long way in preventing vitamin D deficiency.

Rickets and vitamin D deficiency are easily preventable. The rise of rickets in the Bay Area could be quickly eradicated by information disseminated with half the intensity of the sunscreen campaign. Says Scanlon, “I don’t know what different organizations are doing to encourage that all parents are getting that message, but we’re not doing it at Centers for Disease Control. Part of that is just funding issues and what we can do outreach on.” If sunlight could be bottled, sold at $9.99, and “slip, slop, slapped” on every two hours, creating a $455 million industry, we could probably find corporate funding to spread the message.

Alas, the sun is free, and a year’s supply of supplements can be purchased for $30. For now, parents who are trying to do “everything right” for their children will have to rely on the trickle of information that creeps into the media every time vitamin D is linked to the prevention of yet another disease.

The question now is of degree. Is peak oil “a non-event if we have enough foresight and the economics work to ensure we get the alternatives ready,” as BP Executive Director Iain Conn describes it? Or, as Chevron’s campaign wonders, “Is this something you should be worried about?”

The answer thus far has been a resounding: “Hell no! This is America. We’ll eat our crops and burn them too.”

According to President Bush’s recent State of the Union address, we need not worry about peak oil because we are “on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.”

Bush’s plan (“Twenty in Ten”) includes reducing US gas use by 20 percent in the next ten years by improving fuel economy standards and replacing gas with alternative fuels. Conspicuously absent from his strategy and indicative of the overriding problem with claiming alternative fuels as the solution is the need for fundamental changes in behavior. Biofuel does have great potential to be sustainable, but problems are likely to arise if Big Ag and Big Oil practices continue to dominate.

The size and speed of the proposed increase, to 35 billion gallons by 2017 (in 2005 the US produced less than billion gallons of ethanol and 75 million gallons of biodiesel), encourages large-scale, industrial production. Currently, about 85 percent of US ethanol is made from corn, which uses copious amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, depletes the soil, and needs extensive irrigation that contributes to erosion. Notorious Clean Air Act violator Archer Daniels Midland, which now controls 25 percent of ethanol production, daily demonstrates just how incompatible cleaner fuel and cleaner environmental practices can be. Listed as number 10 on the Political Economy Research Institute’s Toxic 100 and run by Patricia Woertz, former executive vice president of Chevron, there is little hope that ADM will stray far from business as usual.

Another plan, making cellulosic ethanol from grassland biomass, particularly switchgrass, does not have the same disadvantages as corn. Indigenous to the North and Central American prairie, switchgrass is a deep-rooted perennial grass that can improve soil. Considered a conservation crop, its roots increase soil depth, prevent erosion, and slow surface water, decreasing runoff. It needs very little fertilizer and could be utilized in rotation to build organic matter in areas degraded by agricultural use.

And for those worried about taking biomass from the earth and returning nothing to the soil, there is good news. According to David Bransby, switchgrass expert and professor of agronomy & soils at Auburn University, this concern arises from a misapprehension. Says Bransby, “None of the key nutrients that plants obtain from the soil are incorporated into ethanol, which contains only carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. In the processes used to produce ethanol from plant matter, these nutrients will be collected in the residual ash that will be applied back to the switchgrass fields. So all the nutrients are recycled, or if deficient, restored with standard fertilization procedures such as we apply to any of our other food and feed crops. Therefore, the system is completely sustainable.”

While it is heartening to know that switchgrass cultivation for ethanol can be done sustainably (though I would beg to differ that “standard fertilization” forms part of that equation), so too could the practices of our current ethanol production. For example, using Brazil as a model, David Blume, ethanol guru, ecologist, and permaculture instructor, describes how smaller ethanol facilities are centered around farms in which the stillage (the liquid byproduct containing the nutrients the plant has obtained from the soil) is piped back to the soil from which it came. “One of the things about alcohol fuel,” says Blume, “is that it does give us the opportunity to close the nutrient loop if we choose to.”

The problem is that so far in the US, we have chosen not to. As larger companies clamor to ratchet up their biofuel production and gain a big share of that proposed 35 billion gallons, the trend toward Big Ag’s bad judgment will likely worsen, a strange fate for a sustainable fuel that could be produced—and controlled—locally.

But I was neither bringing goods to market nor depending upon the income. Where livelihoods are at stake, the very effective pyrethrins, naturally derived from the chrysanthemum plant, struck me as a miracle. “It seemed like a really good solution to organophosphates,” recalls Dr. Inge Werner, director of the Aquatic Toxicology Lab at UC Davis.

But pyrethrins had a drawback: though they will readily kill the pest, they don’t stick around to gun it out a couple weeks down the road. Farmers wanted something long-lasting that they wouldn’t have to spray on every week. Enter pyrethroids, the synthetic cousins of pyrethrin. Pyrethroids have an extra molecule or two that adds to their stability and toxicity, to protect crops from insect damage more effectively. “Their trait of being hydrophobic—they don’t like to go into solution, into water—made them good candidates to counter aquatic toxicity,” Werner says. “They tend to stick to whatever they come into contact with.”

But that very stickiness means the pesticide clings to soil particles, to mud, to potting mixes from commercial nurseries. Storms and drip or overhead irrigation can wash the particles into drainage ditches and nearby creeks, where they can be toxic. Werner’s group applied organophosphate on one side of an orchard and pyrethroids on the other. By measuring the stormwater runoff, they discovered that the pyrethroid side was far more deadly to fish than the organophosphate side.

Pyrethroids are extremely toxic to fish and smaller organisms. A nursery might use 25 parts per million pyrethroid in its potting mix to discourage ants; 0.007 parts per billion can kill aquatic invertebrates. “They are toxic at such low concentrations that sometimes we can’t measure it, but it still affects the organism,” Werner says. “People say, ‘Oh, well, we didn’t detect anything.’ That doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Werner worries about the misinformation spread by nurseries and hardware stores. “These compounds are super toxic, but we’re told, `This is natural; this is from chrysanthemum.’ Most people don’t know the difference between pyrethrins and pyrethroids.” Brand names for pyrethroids include the all-too descriptive Capture, Talstar, Warrior, Ammo, Fury, Ambush, and Pounce. If you see bifenthrin or permethrin on the label, you know you’re dealing with a synthetic pyrethroid.

More studies are needed to understand the extent of the problem. “We’re still not sure how much gets into the water and dissolves,” Werner says. Once the pyrethroids are in the water, they remain sticky. “They do bind and then settle out,” she says. “They don’t remain so toxic. So we don’t know how much of these compounds fish encounter. And we don’t know anything about the effects on organisms who feed on algae or plants that have pyrethroids stuck to them.”

As usual, the precautionary principle is invoked in the rearview mirror.

“We have a chance to do it in a smart way,” Werner says. “If you’re using pyrethrins that will kill your pests and then degrade, and you’re not spraying them on right before a storm, then it can be safe. But if you’re talking pyrethroids, you have to be more aware of the fact that they could be washed into a nearby creek or a storm drain.”

Scientists have known for several years that PPCPs—the pharmaceuticals and personal care products that make their way into wastewater—are not completely removed in sewage treatment plants. Residue is discharged as “treated” wastewater into places such as San Francisco Bay, where no one knows its potential impacts. Just recently, scientists also began examining whether the pharma residue might be present in biosolids, the nutrient-rich sludge left after treatment. Roughly half of the many thousands of dry tons of treated sludge is applied as fertilizer to crop-growing soils in the United States every year.

In a recent study, US Geological Survey scientists found that a potpourri of household disinfectants, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fragrances, and plasticizers often is present in biosolids—and in concentrations tens to thousands of times higher than in treated liquid waste. On a hunch, they collected earthworms from agricultural fields in the Midwest and western United States. “It wasn’t a huge intellectual insight on our part,” says USGS’ Ed Furlong, one of the study’s scientists. “Earthworms aren’t migratory—they’re in the soil, they reflect what’s happening locally. They’re the primary consumers of organic material in soil. We thought that if these compounds persist for any length of time in the soil, the earthworm would be a good candidate to study.”

The worms proved fruitful. The researchers detected 31 compounds, among them household disinfectants, fragrances, caffeine, and Prozac, in the worms’ tissues, in concentrations ranging from 100s to 1,000s of micrograms per kilogram (parts per billion). Furlong stresses that these concentrations are very low, and he doesn’t want people to be alarmed. But he does think that the results point to the need for research—and for solutions. “You have to remember that wastewater treatment systems were never designed to remove all of these compounds,” says Furlong. “Yet they’ve been very successful at managing nutrients, pathogens, and carbon loads as new issues have arisen. This is the way it works—scientists identify the questions, and the wastewater community looks for answers. We’re still coming up with the questions.”

Here’s one—if these chemicals are in worms, what about robins? “It might be a good idea to look at the primary consumers of earthworms and see if they are taking it up,” says Furlong.

For now, his team is investigating whether any of these same compounds are found in the plants that grow in the biosolid-enriched soil—plants that are food for livestock and humans. Furlong agrees that the discovery of Prozac in earthworms illustrates the closed nature of our loop: there really is no “away” anywhere, no matter how much flushing or filling we do. “We’ve always known that the system is broader than ‘flush and gone.’ But this is a way for people to recognize that their choices in what they use and what we as a society use are going to be reflected in the waste stream—and end up in the watershed.”

Wrong. If you think that you’re not eating MSG, take a closer look. According to former food process engineer and food scientist Carol Hoerlein and her colleagues, MSG or free glutamate, MSG’s active component, is found in an astonishing array of today’s processed and restaurant food—and even on produce.

Hoerlein’s group has compiled independent research on its nonprofit web site, MSGTruth.org. A partial list of affected foods includes some McDonald’s products, most KFC products, Hamburger Helper Microwave Singles, Doritos, Pringles, Boar’s Head cold cuts, Progresso Soups, Lipton Noodles and Sauce, Lipton instant soup mix, almost all Kraft products, all Knorr products, Cup-a-Soup, Cup-o-Noodles, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce (for more, see www.msgtruth.org). In addition, the EPA has approved the use of Auxigro, which contains free glutamate, as a fertilizer, so produce sprayed with Auxigro also may contain the chemical. On average, a person in an industrialized country consumes 0.3-1.0 grams of synthetic MSG a day.

The FDA classified MSG into the GRAS category (generally recognized as safe) in 1958 and has reaffirmed that position in subsequent evaluations. MSG need only be listed on the product label when synthetic MSG is added. When other ingredients containing up to 20 percent MSG are added to a product, the FDA does not require MSG to be listed. Such ingredients that may contain MSG include natural flavors, protein hydrolates, and soy protein isolate. Also, MSG produced as a result of the processing of ingredients does not need to be listed. Adding to the confusion, these products often claim to have “No MSG” or “No added MSG.”

Says Hoerlein: “I think it should be labeled properly. [The FDA] finally labeled transfats so you know what you’re eating. What the food companies are doing now is hiding it. It’s in the best interest of the food industry to say what they’re using, because a lot of people are avoiding things they don’t need to.”

Though synthetic MSG has been in use for almost a century, the question of whether it has toxic effects remains a topic of heavy debate. The glutamate lobby (www.msgfacts.com/index.html) cites studies showing MSG is completely safe, while its opponents charge that MSG (and other substances such as aspartame) are linked to the worldwide spread of obesity, exacerbation of asthma, and brain damage.

First, what is MSG? The simplest answer is that MSG is a salt composed of a sodium atom and a molecule of glutamate, a nonessential amino acid. In solid form, it is a white crystalline powder, but once it has dissolved into a liquid, its two components separate. Free glutamate is the agent that gives MSG its flavoring properties as well as its possible toxic effects.

There are many sources of free glutamate; it is released when protein is digested and occurs naturally in some foods, including breast milk, parmesan cheese, and tomatoes. Free glutamate entering the body through the gastrointestinal tract is identical and is processed identically. Glutamate is the most common amino acid in animal proteins and is a precursor for the production of other amino acids and glutathione, a compound that protects cells in the gastrointestinal tract from damage due to dietary toxins. Also, glutamate serves as an energy source for some types of muscle, including cardiac muscle.

The largest and most rigorous toxicity study involved researchers at Harvard University, Northwestern University, and UCLA. They took 130 subjects who believed that they were MSG-sensitive and exposed them to up to 5 grams of MSG a day with or without food. Twenty-four people did not complete the study, but of those who did, only two people had reactions. The symptoms these two experienced were not present when MSG was given with food. Researchers concluded that there were no reproducible responses to MSG, and that there was no evidence indicating that MSG has a toxic effect when used at levels reasonable for a food additive. In another study, human adults, infants, and premature babies were given up to 150 mg MSG per kg of body weight. Only a slight rise in plasma glutamate concentrations was produced, indicating that people of all ages can metabolize MSG efficiently.

Additional studies have shown that glutamate does not readily pass the placental barrier between mother and fetus. Pregnant rhesus monkeys were fed enough MSG to cause a ten-fold rise of glutamate in their blood levels, but little or no increase in glutamate concentration was observed in fetal blood level. Mice fed with diets containing four percent free glutamate for up to two years and including a reproductive phase did not suffer any ill effects. A two-year study in dogs fed with ten percent glutamate did not find any change in weight gain, organ weights, or general behavior.

However, large doses of MSG in newborns reproducibly cause neuronal damage in the hypothalamus of the brain. The hypothalamus is more susceptible to toxins because the blood-brain barrier surrounding it is not effective, particularly in the young. Appetite, thirst, a number of endocrine pathways, and muscle contraction are all regulated by the hypothalamus. The dose required to produce this damage is, fortunately, quite high. In very young mice, the most sensitive species, 500 mg MSG per kg body weight by average is necessary to produce neuronal damage. By contrast, the largest palatable dose for people is about 60 mg per kg body weight. Higher doses cause nausea.

These studies portray MSG as a relatively harmless flavor enhancer, but some nutritionists insist that even minute amounts of MSG can cause severe toxic reactions and cite studies conflicting with the Harvard research. A group called Truth in Labeling claims that pro-MSG studies are funded by industry advocates and that while naturally derived free glutamate has no toxic effects, synthetically produced glutamate contains toxic impurities. More alarmingly, some connect MSG, the spread of obesity, and the increase in incidence of neurological disorders.

Clinical nutritionist Carol Simontacchi writes that MSG has subtle neurological effects, including dyslexia or frequent bursts of uncontrollable anger and that, “There is evidence that MSG may be concentrated on the fetal side of the placenta so that the child receives a higher dose,” which can cause abnormal brain development. In one study, mice injected with MSG have lower free glutathione levels. Glutathione protects against mercury poisoning, a suspected cause of autism. Also, glutamate blockers are used to treat manic depression, depression, and seizures. While most evidence against MSG remains circumstantial, it is still thought-provoking.

Additional studies link glutamate to obesity and type II diabetes. According to MSGTruth.org, higher levels of glutamate in the blood can cause an increase in insulin levels that triggers hunger, and continued exposure to high insulin levels leads to insulin resistance and type II diabetes. Injection of MSG into lab animals is used to cause obesity, and these animals become resistant to leptin, a hormone secreted by fat tissue to suppress hunger. More evidence linking obesity and MSG comes from a recent study done in Germany. Young rats fed five grams of MSG a day had increased appetite, body fat percentage, and insulin resistance. However, experimental groups were small, consisting of only six to nine rats each, and the doses of MSG used were very high given that a rat weighs less than a kilogram.

Given MSG’s prevalence in our food and the conflicting studies, how does one decide what to eat or to feed children? In the end, it’s an individual choice, but that choice would be aided by proper labeling. “If you just listed on the label how much MSG is in the final product then that would help, because people are really getting fat,” says Hoerlein. “Processed foods haven’t been a blessing for humanity. We should go back to whole foods, the way we used to eat.”