The textured vegetable protein experiment: Even rabbits won't eat it

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: soy products, soy protein, textured vegetable protein

There's a hill in the back yard outside my house where a lot of rabbits, squirrels and quail come to eat the various foods I distribute from time to time. I sometimes put vegetable scraps, fruit pulp, nut pulp or even old packaged foods on the hill for the benefit of these animals, and it's very interesting to watch them and find out what they eat and how quickly they eat it. I've observed these animals eating just about everything I put out there -- beans, pasta, crackers, nuts, seeds, crumbs, lots of fruits and vegetables -- but there's one thing they absolutely refuse to eat. I recently put out a bag of dried, textured vegetable protein (TVP) chunks made from soy. It turns out that none of the animals will touch this stuff. It's almost like they'd rather die of starvation than eat TVP.

This is very interesting, because animals will eat just about any kind of food you can imagine, and if the birds or rabbits don't eat it, the ants usually carry it away. But this stuff just sat out there for two solid days, which I've never seen before. Usually things disappear within a matter of hours, but this textured vegetable protein appears to be non-food from the perspective of animals.

I have a great deal of trust in nature. Animals have good survival skills. They know what's good for them, what they should eat and what they should try to avoid, and they are definitely avoiding this TVP, so it's really making me wonder: What's wrong with this so-called food?

I've researched the opinions of quite a few health experts on textured vegetable protein. Dr. Russell Blaylock urges me to avoid all processed soy products. He says that many of them have free glutamate, or MSG, in them, and I've definitely observed that to be true. For example, most of the vegetarian beef jerky products, or the textured vegetable protein products, contain yeast extract, MSG or some other kind of chemical taste-enhancer.

I've also received literally hundreds of emails from readers asking my opinion on soy and whether I'm aware of some of the nutritional dangers of relying too much on soy. To date, my position has always been if you're going to eat soy, fermented soy -- like miso or properly processed tofu -- is best, but non-fermented soy is probably something not to be used in very large doses.

In the past, I have eaten quite a bit of soy, including soy protein, but my favorite protein source at this point is actually rice protein, because I think it's a cleaner protein. Occasionally I will use high-quality whey protein, but I continue to notice that it's not as "clean" a protein source as rice protein. I'm definitely not going to be buying TVP chunks any more. If the rabbits won't eat them, that's scary. Rabbits will eat practically anything, including cacti, old fruit, dried lettuce, and vegetable scraps. But they won't eat textured vegetable protein, at least not in my back yard.

Yet look at all the processed soy protein found in protein bars, cereals and frozen pizza. It's even used in burgers at fast food chains. Why are we all eating what rabbits refuse to eat? Could it be that desert rabbits know something we don't? Maybe they know that textured vegetable protein isn't really food.

It's something to seriously consider. If starving animals, whose very survival depends on finding enough calories in a harsh environment, won't eat this textured vegetable protein, then maybe we should take a closer look at why.

After three days, by the way, the TVP finally disappeared. Apparently some animal was so close to starvation that it decided to eat the TVP as a last resort. I hope the little guy is ok.