Changing Hawaii

By Diane Yukihiro Chang

Monday, November 29, 1999

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Indigestion over
validity of
food studies

GO ahead. Try telling a Japanese person that eating too much tofu is bad for the health. It's like cajoling a cattle rancher to give up red meat, or convincing a kid that candy's bad for the teeth.

Yeah, right. Save your breath, pal.

While any or all of the above may be true, listen up -- I, for one, just don't care anymore.

Even after that traumatizing front-page story in the Star-Bulletin on Nov. 19.

It announced that a Hawaii research team has discovered consumption of tofu in high quantities -- namely two or more servings a week (that's high?!) -- may actually induce brain aging and Alzheimer's disease in men.

A Pacific Health Institute researcher, Dr. Lon White, says there is a significant link between a mid-life male's tofu consumption and the loss of his mental ability, even a loss in brain weight.

For guys who ate the most tofu, the rate of brain impairment seemed to go up faster; soy-block lovers aged 75-80 also looked five years older.

Local tofu manufacturers, health-care professionals and consumers in general were naturally shocked by these findings. But I wasn't.

Any day now, there's going to be another official scientific study propounding -- unequivocally, absolutely -- that eating tofu in large quantities makes you smarter, increases your brain weight, staves off Alzheimer's and makes you look 10 years younger.

Need proof? Note all the confusing information being thrown at pregnant women about whether they can drink coffee and not cause harm to their unborn babies.

A study published in this month's New England Journal of Medicine said that as many as six cups of coffee per day may NOT increase the risk of miscarriage. Six cups!

Yet last year another study said that pregnant women who consumed a mere one or two cups of coffee per day increased their risk of miscarriage by 40 percent, and risk of having an underweight baby by 50 percent.

So, which is it, Doc?

It gets even more confusing when it comes to whether women should drink booze:

Aug. 3, 1999 -- "Alcohol every day...can reduce the risk of heart problems, said doctors at one of the world's largest heart-disease conferences."
April 15, 1997 -- "Women in their 30s who regularly consume two or more alcoholic drinks per day have an 80 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer, according to government researchers."
April 10, 1999 -- "Women who drink as little as a glass of wine a day during pregnancy could be causing neurological damage to the fetus, the British Psychological Society was told."
March 25, 1997 -- "Three or four glasses of wine a day can help prevent Alzheimer's disease or senile dementia," according to researchers at Bordeaux (France) University Hospital.
Jan. 10, 1997 -- "Researchers have now discovered a substance in wine and grapes that protects against cancer."

PAY attention, now: Women should have a glass of wine every day; unless they're pregnant; but not more than two drinks per day if they're in their 30s or they'll get breast cancer; or they can imbibe three or four times a day if they want to avoid Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia.

Or is the other way around?

Oh, shaddup and pass the tofu. And don't forget the soy sauce.

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Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
dchang@starbulletin.com, or by fax at 523-7863.