Vegan pork pies #3: soy for longevity

Third in this occasional series on vegan pork pies (lies) is this: soy consumption equals longevity. This is still commonly found around the Internetz: a website about super-aging has a section on the Okinawans. ‘Eat more soy,’ it says, as a key to longevity. And it is via the Japanese island of Okinawa that this vegan myth, helped along by the pro-vegan food writer John Robbins, emanates. Centenarians run, or used to run, at 34 per 100,000 people there. In the far less sub-tropical, far more stressful, post-industrial hellhole that is the UK, the current rate of centenarians is, by my calculation, around 23 per 100,000. Okinawans, it is said – mainly by vegans, of course – eat lots of soy products, and this is why they tend to live so long. Robbins has asserted that Okinawans eat 12% of their calories as soy, but it turns…