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Several sources claim that eating soy has an effect on estrogen levels (for example, Livestrong, American Cancer Society and sfgate).

Some sources go further and say eating soy affects men's sex-drives:

Soy foods lower your sex drive (Japanese housewives would feed more soy to their husbands to reduce their virility when they feared infidelity or pregnancy) Soy’s has also been proven to lead to infertility in males.

Source: HealthLevelUp

Does soy affect sex drive (via estrogen levels or otherwise)?

Sklivvz
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Git Gud
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  • could be split into 2 parts, does soy increase estrogen and are high levels of estrogen harmful to a male's fertility – ratchet freak Aug 27 '13 at 11:58
  • @ratchetfreak I'm not interested just in male fertility but rather in virility as a whole. Would changing the second part of your proposal to consider the more general issue suggested by comment be OK? – Git Gud Aug 27 '13 at 12:02
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    [Welcome to Skeptics!](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users) We want to focus our attention on doubtful claims that are widely held or are made by notable people. Please [provide some references](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/882/what-are-the-attributes-of-a-good-question/883#883) to places where this claim is being made. – Oddthinking Aug 27 '13 at 12:04
  • @Oddthinking Oh, all right. Thank you for warning me. – Git Gud Aug 27 '13 at 12:07
  • About splitting to two parts, I'm not sure that's as simple as that, AFAIR soy contains something that is similar but not identical to Estrogen. – Ofir Aug 27 '13 at 12:14
  • @Ofir I understand. But I don't know enough about nutrition, hormones of the human body to ask a questiondealing with all the details. Thank for your input, though. – Git Gud Aug 27 '13 at 12:17
  • Thanks for the references. None of them deal with men, and in particular, men's virility. I added a new reference that made the claim, and made a significant edit that moved away from estrogren and more on the claimed effects. Hope that's okay. – Oddthinking Aug 27 '13 at 12:34
  • @Oddthinking Thank you for making my question suit the site better, – Git Gud Aug 27 '13 at 13:01
  • @Oddthinking The last comment, at the bottom of the HealthLevelUp link which you edited-in to the answer, lists nine studies which allegedly address the issue and 'debunk' the referenced claim. – ChrisW Aug 27 '13 at 14:44
  • @ChrisW: :-) I didn't read that far; I was just looking for notability specific to soy, men and virility. You should use that as a good start to an answer (But check it isn't cherry-picked.) – Oddthinking Aug 27 '13 at 16:31
  • @Oddthinking Finding and reading a claim can be informative. I cannot answer this now, but I found your list of [suggestions for how to select better references](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1414/2703), as well as a [list of some reliable sources](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1387/2703). – ChrisW Aug 27 '13 at 18:20

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This appears to be the subject of active study, but so far the results do not seem to indicate a significant effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens#Health_risks_and_benefits

Ofir
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