The Dark Side of Soy
July 3rd, 2007Via: Utne Reader:
As someone who is conscious of her health, I spent 13 years cultivating a vegetarian diet. I took time to plan and balance meals that included products such as soy milk, soy yogurt, tofu, and Chick’n patties. I pored over labels looking for words I couldn’t pronounce–occasionally one or two would pop up. Soy protein isolate? Great! They’ve isolated the protein from the soybean to make it more concentrated. Hydrolyzed soy protein? I never successfully rationalized that one, but I wasn’t too worried. After all, in 1999 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved labeling I found on nearly every soy product I purchased: “Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease.” Soy ingredients weren’t only safe–they were beneficial.
After years of consuming various forms of soy nearly every day, I felt reasonably fit, but somewhere along the line I’d stopped menstruating. I couldn’t figure out why my stomach became so upset after I ate edamame or why I was often moody and bloated. It didn’t occur to me at the time to question soy, heart protector and miracle food.
When I began studying holistic health and nutrition, I kept running across risks associated with eating soy. Endocrine disruption? Check. Digestive problems? Check. I researched soy’s deleterious effects on thyroid, fertility, hormones, sex drive, digestion, and even its potential to contribute to certain cancers. For every study that proved a connection between soy and reduced disease risk another cropped up to challenge the claims. What was going on?
“Studies showing the dark side of soy date back 100 years,” says clinical nutritionist Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story (New Trends, 2005). “The 1999 FDA-approved health claim pleased big business, despite massive evidence showing risks associated with soy, and against the protest of the FDA’s own top scientists. Soy is a $4 billion [U.S.] industry that’s taken these health claims to the bank.” Besides promoting heart health, the industry says, soy can alleviate symptoms associated with menopause, reduce the risk of certain cancers, and lower levels of LDL, the “bad” cholesterol.
Epidemiological studies have shown that Asians, particularly in Japan and China, have a lower incidence of breast and prostate cancer than people in the United States, and many of these studies credit a traditional diet that includes soy. But Asian diets include small amounts–about nine grams a day–of primarily fermented soy products, such as miso, natto, and tempeh, and some tofu. Fermenting soy creates health-promoting probiotics, the good bacteria our bodies need to maintain digestive and overall wellness. By contrast, in the United States, processed soy food snacks or shakes can contain over 20 grams of nonfermented soy protein in one serving.
…
Once considered a small-scale poverty food, soy exploded onto the American market. Studies–some funded by the industry–promoted soy’s ability to lower disease risk while absolving guilt associated with eating meat. “The soy industry has come a long way from when hippies were boiling up the beans,” says Daniel.
These days the industry has discovered ways to use every part of the bean for profit. Soy oil has become the base for most vegetable oils; soy lecithin, the waste product left over after the soybean is processed, is used as an emulsifier; soy flour appears in baked and packaged goods; different forms of processed soy protein are added to everything from animal feed to muscle-building protein powders. “Soy protein isolate was invented for use in cardboard,” Daniel says. “It hasn’t actually been approved as a food ingredient.”
Soy is everywhere in our food supply, as the star in cereals and health-promoting foods and hidden in processed foods. Even if you read every label and avoid cardboard boxes, you are likely to find soy in your supplements and vitamins (look out for vitamin E derived from soy oil), in foods such as canned tuna, soups, sauces, breads, meats (injected under poultry skin), and chocolate, and in pet food and body-care products. It hides in tofu dogs under aliases such as textured vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and lecithin–which is troubling, since the processing required to hydrolyze soy protein into vegetable protein produces excitotoxins such as glutamate (think MSG) and aspartate (a component of aspartame), which cause brain-cell death.
Related: Weston A Price Foundation on Soy
See also the book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967089751
Re your: Dark side of soy article.
Words like Soy protein isolate and Hydrolyzed soy protein are substitute words for MSG.
And I don’t think the soy causes the harm, but I am sure that the MSG does. In my case, my feet go numb and tingle, plus I get all kinds of other body problems when I consume food with MSG, regardless of what name it was given……
Oliver
More on Soya’s Nazi past:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1828158,00.html
Traditional cutlures realized centuries ago that unfermented soy was harmful; that’s why all the cultures that have soy as a staple in their diet foucs only on fermented soy.
I have also heard it said that soy for protien would be very difficult to cultivate and harvest in a de-industrial situation.
Soybeans are planted to put nitrogen back in the soil after years of depletion from usually maize. For years it was either plowed under or mixed in with cattlefeed. Soybeans will be grown, even if they aren’t used by people.
I’ve used tofu and other soy products for years without any problems. I do buy the organic versions. I can’t imagine eating more than 4 ounces a day though. The Hormone factor is probably there, but you are getting cow hormones in milk too.
The Utne article is worst case scenario. People who are consuming mega doses of soy products have another problem. Either they are obese or are consuming Soy protean for muscle building at a rate that is absurd. It just isn’t that wonderful of a food product, and there are plenty of alternatives, even if you are a herbivore.
L&L: Only if you’re trying to isolate the protein. If you’re willing to eat it like any other bean (fermented though, of course) it’s not that hard. You just need to combine it with something else to complete the protein, just as with other legumes.
-Ann, who according to her friends who don’t know any better say she knows why too much useless stuff about food, and why can’t she just shut up and eat?
Soybean oil is also a major component in most ‘vegetable’ oils (along with corn and cottonseed oil). As a result, most everything fried in the United States contains some soy.