Boy! did I ever get a good feeling about the study I'm highlighting in this article! I have one son who's a confirmed card-carrying carnivore and another who's a tofu touter, a vicious vegetarian always ready to pounce with news about why you and I should become lettuce lovers and convert to cakes of kale and cauliflower. Since I am not nearly as enamoured of veggies as my son is - we have regular debates on the merits of beef versus beans - it was with some pleasure that I sent him news of a study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition that found that the more tofu you eat in middle-age, the more your brain deteriorates in old age. In this study of 8000 Japanese-American men living in Hawaii, men who ate 2 or more servings of tofu a week while younger scored worse on tests of brain function in old age than men who spurned tofu. Similar results also seem to hold true for the wives who were tested in this study.
Now, to be fair, there is no clear connection between tofu and brain deterioration. In fact, men in Asian countries where tofu is a key element of traditional diets don't seem to have higher rates of dementia than do North American men. Further, tofu exerts an estrogen-like effect on the brain, and all evidence so far points to estrogen having mostly a positive effect on the brain. So it may be that the best way to interpret this study is that perhaps another factor common to tofu-eaters leads them to eventually score worse on brain tests in old age, which would not surprise me, of course, since I figure there must be something wrong with people who eat lots of tofu to begin with.
Nonetheless, this study warms the heart of this observer who has always argued that we err badly when we focus on only one factor or element as the key to longer and healthier life, whether that factor be soy in Asian diets, lycopene in tomatoes, selenium, DHEA, or the next miracle that comes along tomorrow. It's balance that must be the key.
Equally important, you have to enjoy life, and too many of us do what we think we must do to live longer even if we don't enjoy it. But I figure that, even if it works, eating lots of tofu would never be worth the extra few months it might give me.