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SOY DANGER? SOY ALERT? SOY FEARS? SOY MYTHS?
ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THE SAFETY OF SOY? THE DANGERS OF SOY? SOY ESTROGENS? PERHAPS SOY DAMAGE TO YOUR HEALTH? ARE YOU "RETHINKING" SOY OR WORRIED ABOUT THE "DARK SIDE OF SOY"? WHAT'S THE SCOOP?
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_copyrighted.jpg) I stand for common sense. You can eat a perfectly fine vegan diet without soy-- no question about that. If you are soy allergic, you can find non-soy meat and dairy substitutes, or make them yourself. I have files of them that I can send to people who ask about that.
It really annoys me that people with an anti-vegetarian agenda are spreading nonsense about a food that has sustained humans for thousands of years, distorting history, distorting scientific studies, and spreading hysteria. If you do a search on the internet, it's hard to find anything BUT this hysteria-- no wonder people are confused! That's why I've researched this subject and posted information about it. I don't really care whether you eat soy or not, just make your decision from an informed place!
Soy is a a very versatile food for vegetarians and, if you are not allergic, I see nothing wrong with eating soyfoods daily from organic and non-GMO sources. I have done so for many years, even making my own tofu, even before I was a vegetarian. I am healthy and active as I face my 60's, not sick and "poisoned" as the anti-soy contingent would prefer me to say.
I think that the majority of soyfoods, as with all the other foods you eat, should be traditional soyfoods or soyfoods that have not been overly-tampered with. But what does that mean? Some people call tofu, a soy product with thousands of years of history, that you can make in your own kitchen, a "processed food"! Well, butter is a processed food, as well, then.
I consider traditional Asian foods, like soymilk (I make my own), tofu, miso, soy sauce, and tempeh, foods that I can eat every day if I want to. Other soyfoods that I have no qualms about eating daily (though I don't necessarily-- I eat a very eclectic and varied diet because I like to experiment with many ethnic cuisines) are soy flour, soy yogurt (homemade), and even plain, unflavored dried textured soy protein, which is made from cooked defatted soy flour extruded through "dies" to make granules or shapes, and then dried. (It is not the same as "hydrolized soy protein" in any way!) A new product that I also like is called Soy Curls, which is similar to textured soy protein, but made from the whole soybean.
As for all the new processed soyfoods-- soy weiners, sausages, burgers, "hamburger crumbles", soy cheese, etc.-- we eat them a few times a month when we are in a hurry. My husband was a meat lover 15 years ago and became a vegan on his own, but he craves sausages, etc. sometimes. We buy vegan products that contain ingredients we can understand, and made with organic soy. Most of the time, I make my own meat substitutes at home, and we love beans of all kinds. (I don't panic about protein, and we often have soup meals, or vegetable only meals.) These products are far superior to processed meats that many people think nothing of serving to their children.
A few times a year we might buy soy "ice cream" (again, organic), and I almost never buy tofu sour cream, tofu creme cheese, or vegan "junk foods". Again, I make my own. I can't afford to buy these vegan processed foods, even if I wanted to, and I think my own recipes taste better, most of the time. I can also control fat and calories and fiber content better that way. |
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2.) For those concerned about estrogens in soy:
ADDED NOTE June 20, 2007: The ultimate in soy hysteria can be found here, where the author claims that feeding soy to your children will make them homosexual and reduce penis size, and that eating it as an adult will lower your libido AND make it impossible to conceive!
Soy estrogens are "plant estrogens" or "phytoestrogens" (phyto is Greek for plant). They are found in many plant foods besides soy. This is an article about phytoestrogens from the Institiute of Food, Science and Technology of the UK. It is worth reading. Here is the beginning of it:
"Phytoestrogens are naturally occurring phenolic plant compounds, present in foods such as beans, cabbage, soyabean, grains and hops, and are part of a wider class of polyphenols found in all plants. They are structurally similar to the mammalian oestrogen, oestradiol, and have oestrogenic properties. However, their oestrogenic activity is generally much less than that of human oestrogens (oestrogenic activity ranges from 1/500 to 1/1000 of the activity of oestradiol). Hence phytoestrogens can act as anti-oestrogenic agents by blocking the oestrogen receptors and exerting a much weaker oestrogenic effect compared with the hormone. As a consequence it has been suggested that they might partly suppress or inhibit normal oestrogenic activity in oestrogen-responsive tissues such as breast tissue and may reduce the risk of breast cancer. They may, in addition to their endocrine effects, have action on cellular targets which are independent of oestrogen, thereby complicating the prediction of their properties in humans.
Dietary intake of phytoestrogens
Phytoestrogens are found in the seeds, stems, roots or flowers of plants, serving as natural fungicides and acting as part of the plant's defence mechanism against microorganisms. They also are the molecular signals that emanate from the root of leguminous plants that attract specific nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. The main classes of phytoestrogens are the isoflavones, coumestans and lignans. Isoflavones are receiving a great deal of commercial interest at present; they are found almost exclusively in legumes, the soya bean being the most abundant source. The most important soya isoflavones are genistein and daidzein. Lignans, however, are also an important source of phytoestrogens in the UK diet as they are present in most fibre-rich foods."
So, as you can see, phytoestrogens are not only found in many, many plants besides soy, but they are many, many times weaker than human or artificial estrogens.
There is good material about this subject in an excellent book called The Okinawa Program, pps. 123- 129, including a chart of the "Top 50" foods containing healthful phytoestrogens (see also the sister book The Okinawa Diet Plan). Besides soy, flaxseed, kudzu, carrot leaves, onions, cranberry juice, kale, celery, snow peas, broccoli, turnip greens, black tea, green tea, jasmine tea, green beans, fava beans, applesauce, srtawberries, pintos, lentils all have 2mg or more phytoestrogens per serving.
Here are some values per serving of a small sampling from the chart:
soybeans, cooked, 38.2 mg/ 1/2 cup
onion, 35.8
applesauce, 3.0 mg/1/2 cup
kale, 11.2 mg/1 cup
pinto beans, cooked, 1.9 mg/1/2 cup
garbanzos, cooked, 3.6 mg/1/2 cup
flaxseed, 28.9 mg/ 1 Tbsp
cranberry juice, 44.3 mg / 3/4 cup
What many people don't take into consideration when worrying needlessly about soy estrogens (consumed in soy foods, NOT soy supplements), is that there is good evidence of estrogen contamination in meat and dairy products. If you still eat dairy and/or meat, it would behoove you to read some of the following articles:
Articles about estrogen in dairy products
Articles about estrogen in meat:
Here is a comprehensive report from Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (VIVA!) on "The Dark Side of Dairy".
See also the online complete report "White Lies" by the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation (VVF) "an extensive report ...investigating the links between the consumption of cow’s milk and dairy products and health. White Lies includes forewords by Professor T. Colin Campbell PhD, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and Professor Jane Plant CBE, (DSc, CEng), Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and Professor of Applied Geochemistry at Imperial College in London. The VVF’s 40,000-word report includes over 200 references from the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The report describes the evidence linking a diverse range of health problems and diseases to dairy including some of the UK’s biggest killers such as heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer and prostate cancer as well as osteoporosis, eczema, asthma, Crohn’s disease, colic, constipation and even teenage acne." |
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ADDED NOTE June 20, 2007: The ultimate in soy hysteria can be found here, where the author claims that feeding soy to your children will make them homosexual and reduce penis size, and that eating it as an adult will lower your libido AND make it impossible to conceive!
Do not worry! The birth rate in Asia, where soyfoods are eaten regularly by everyone, should set your mind at rest!
Here is an informative article;
Here is some information from my book "Soyfoods Cooking for a Positive Menopause". (I've highlighted some parts in bold text when they pertain to men, but read through the whole essay in order to get a full understanding):
The phytoestrogens in soy are structurally similar to human estrogen, but very weak compared to the estrogens that the human body produces. They bind with estrogen receptors in the human body. Phytoestrogens are believed to protect against breast and prostate cancers, two hormone-dependent cancers. Isoflavones, found in soy, are only one type of phyto (or plant) hormone or sterol. There are many others available in a number of plant foods.
Other foods that contain phytosterols (some with "estrogenic" qualities, and some with "progesterogenic" qualities) are:
Most seeds and nuts and their oil;, most legumes; green leafy vegetables; sea vegetables; common vegetables such as asparagus, beets, cabbage family, carrots, celery, corn, onion family, garlic, nightshade family (peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes), squash, yam, turnip, cucumber, parsley, and more "exotic" ones such as bamboo shoots, okra, and Jerusalem artichokes;naturally-fermented beer; most common spices and herbs; sprouted seeds and grains; most fruits and whole grains.
These foods have not been studied sufficiently to know what how much phytoestrogen or other phytosterols they contain. Soyfoods have been studied exhaustively and it is now easy to figure how much isoflavone there is in a serving of one soyfood or another. One tablespoon of flaxseed has about an equal portion of isoflavones to one portion of soyfood. Wild yam is full of isoflavones and is used as a source for natural progesterone and estrogen therapy products, but it is not the same as the yam we buy in the grocery store.
And, by the way, cooking, baking, and frying do not seem to effect the viability of phytoestrogens.)
Isoflavones resemble animal (or human, in this case) estrogens just enough to be accepted by cell estrogen receptors and bind weakly to the cell surface membrane. The estrogen receptors have been compared to "tiny switching stations", "locks" or "docking stations" on the cells. Joanna Dwyer and colleagues at the New England Medical Center and Tufts University theorized in an article they wrote for The Journal of The American Dietetic Association (July 1994) that in premenopausal women the estrogen receptors are occupied and the weaker plant estrogens must compete for these sites. However, in postmenopausal women, whose self-produced estrogen declines about 60%, there is a far greater chance of the plant estrogens "docking" and this can increase the amount of estrogens available to her.
Perhaps the most important soybean estrogen in genistein. It is considered a powerful anticarcinogen and it is found in good supply in whole soybeans (including roasted soybeans or "soynuts"), textured soy protein, soy flour, soymilk, tofu and tofu products, and tempeh.
Daidzein, another soybean estrogen genorously supplied by these soy foods, is now under intense study for its potential cancer-fighting and bone-building qualities. It, like genistein, is turned by intestinal bacteria into a substance that competes with human estrogen. Although other foods contain phytosterols, no other commonly consumed foods contain these two powerful phytoestrogens. And it has been proven in human studies that isoflavones in the diet are absorbed into the bloodstream-- one study in which volunteers ate 40 grams of textured soy protein daily for just five days, the isoflavone levels in their urine (which indicates their presence in the bloodstream) increased as much as thousandfold in comparison to levels taken before the study.
In fact, in a 1993 study, women living in a controlled environment for two months had an average increase of two and a half days in the length of time between menstrual periods when they ate soy, which attests to the powerful effect phytoestrogens can have on a woman's body.
(This type of evidence has led a few scientists to wonder if eating large amounts of soy can lower fertility, but most authorities, including Mark Messina, Ph.D., author of The Simple Soybean and Your Health, points out that Chinese and Japanese women have no trouble with fertility levels, despite daily high soy intake. Kenneth Setchell, Ph.D., professor of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Cincinnati says that, though soy lengthens the cycle, it does not prevent ovulation and there is still a normal menstrual cycle. And there is some evidence that eating soy can enhance fertility in men. The isoflavone genistein may be used to treat male sterility because it affects blood levels of LH [luteinizing hormone], needed for normal sperm production. Soybeans are also high in zinc, a mineral used by the body in the formation of many hormones and which also functions as an antioxidant. Zinc deficiency has been shown to affect reproduction in animals.)
Boron, a trace element which is necessary for our health but which you need very little of, helps activate both vitamin D and estrogen. It is in good supply in plant foods, such as the soybean, but not in animal proteins. A study was done in 1986 of post-menopausal women between the ages of 48 and 82, led by Forrest Nielsen, Ph.D., director of the U.S, Department of Agriculture's Agricultural research Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Boron supplementation markedly reduced urinary excretion of calcium and magnesium and also raised the level of and estrogen called estradiol-17 beta, a female hormone, and testosterone (a precursor to estradiol-17 beta), a predominantly male hormone which women produce in smaller amounts, but which increases energy and libido. (Testosterone is now often prescribed in small amounts to postmenopausal women who have lost their sexual desire.) Boron supplementation is not recommended-- it should be easy to ingest enough of this ultra-trace mineral on a plant-based diet containing lots of soy.
One of the factors that perked the interest of cancer researchers some years ago was the striking difference between mortality rates for breast cancer and prostate cancer in the West (North America and Europe) compared to Asian countries, such as China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Thailand. In the West, your chances of dying of breast or prostate cancer can be ten to twenty times higher than if you lived in one of these Asian countries!
(Japan's average daily soy intake is 29.5 g, whereas in the U. S. it is negligible. Japan's breast cancer death rate is 6 per 100,000 people, and the U. S. rate is 22.4 per 100,000. Japan's prostate cancer death rate is 3.5 per 100,000, and the U.S. rate is 15.7.)
MORE ABOUT SOY AND CANCER:
Only a small number of cancers can be attributed to heredity, and, when Asians emigrate to Western countries, within a couple of generations their descendants catch right up to other Westerners in terms of cancer deaths. Even in Asia itself, as the diet has become more Westernized, there has been a slow but steady rise in mortality from all types of cancer.
Studies of Japanese men on traditional high-fiber, high-vegetable, low-fat diets showed consistently that, though Japanese men get prostate cancer at the same rate as North American men, far fewer Japanese die from the disease, because the cancer does not grow or progress. When Japanese men move to North America and eat more Westernized diets, cancers are faster-growing.
Although it has not been clinically proven (an argument you will here time and time again from dairy boards and meat producers), you don't have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that the Western high-fat, high-protein, low-fiber diet might have something to do with this discrepancy. The seven countries with the highest rates of breast cancer (over 20 deaths per 100,000 people per year) are countries where the average intake of fat is the highest (about 150 g a day). The seven countries with the lowest rates of breast cancer (about 5 per 100,000) occur in countries with the lowest intake of fats (less than 50 g a day). Prostate cancer rates are very similar.
However, another major protective factor may be soy in the Asian diet. A major 20-year study of 8000 Japanese men in Hawaii found a direct correlation between tofu consumption and lower rates of prostate cancer. Those who consumed tofu once a week or less were three times as likely to get prostate cancer as those who ate it daily. Other factors were measured, including fat intake, and tofu consumption was deemed to be most protective.
Cancer is believed to be a two-stage process-- initiation, or exposure to a cancer-causing substance, and promotion, or stimulation by another substance that makes the first become active. There is considerable research going on today into substances that prevent the promotion stage and therefore halt or reverse cancer development. This is possible because there may be ten years or more between the time of tumor initiation and actual malignancy.
Soybeans contain several factors which may inhibit cancer growth, which may explain why the Japanese men in those studies got prostate cancer, but succumbed to it far less often than did their Western counterparts.
Protease inhibitors are non-nutritive substances that are found in the reproductive parts of soybeans and other vegetables. Because they block the activity of an enzyme that aids the digestion of proteins, they were once thought to interfere with nutrition. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture spent alot of time and money trying to remove protease inhibitors from soybeans because they thought their removal would improve growth in children! However, it has been established that protease inhibitors are capable of neutralizing the effects of a large number of cancer-causing agents. Dr. Ann Kennedy, then of Harvard, now a leading researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, reported that even brief exposure of initiated and/or promoted cells to the Bowman-Birk Inhibitor (BBI), a protease inhibitor derived from soybeans, not only prevented transformatioon of the cells into cancers, but also "reprogrammmed" their precancerous changes back to the "pre-initiation" stage.
In many laboratory studies, scientists have investigated protease inhibitors, especially BBI, and found that they inhibited cancers of the colon, lung, pancreas, mouth, esophagus, skin, and bladder. Evidently, protease inhibitors prevent the activation of specific genes that cause cancer, and they also protect against the damaging effects of free radicals and radiation.
Other substances in soybeans and other plant foods that seem to have anti-cancer properties are: polyphenols that have been reported to interfere with tumor promotiion and to act as "garbage collectors", disposing of cell-damaaging mutagens and cancer-causing agents; phytates, the plant storage form of the mineral phosphorus, abundant in soybeans, and a chelator, a substance that binds with certain metals that may promote tumor growth and also acts as an antioxidant, preventing free radical damage; phytosterols, which are related to cholesterols, but found only in plant foods, and move straight through our intestines to our colons, protecting them against the harmful effects of bile acids and reducing the development of colon tumors; saponins, antioxidants which protect against free radical damage and, in laboratory investigations, have been shown to prevent mutations that can lead to cancer.
All of these substances, and several others which are still being investigated, occur in many plant foods, which is one very good reason why you should eat a plant-based diet with a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes. But soy contains them all, and more, which makes soy a valuable and potentially protective food.
Dr. Mark Messina and Virginia Messina, in their wonderfully informative book The Simple Soybean and Your Health, point out the intriguing results of over thirty different epidemiologic studies that have been conducted on many types of cancers and many varieties of soyfoods. Most of these studies were comparisons between people living in different parts of Asia, who have generally similar diets and lifestyles (including fat intake), which makes them more useful than comparisons of Western and Asian diets, which have radically different average rates of fat consumption. They suggest that people who frequently consume soyfoods have lower cancer rates than those who consume soyfoods less often. In many of the studies, it seems that people who eat soyfoods daily have about half the risk of cancer as those who eat soyfoods only once or twice a week. For instance, a study in Singapore found that those women with the highest soyfood consumption had less than half the breast cancer risk than those who consumed soyfoods only rarely. A Japanese study showed that people who ate soy had only 1/7th the risk of rectal cancer of those who did not eat soy, and that eating soybeans and tofu lowered the colon cancer risk by 40%. In China, frequent consumers of soymilk had less than half the stomach cancer risk of those who did not drink it. Several Chinese studies (where smoking is more prevalent than in North Amerrica) found that lung cancer risk could be lowered by half with frequent tofu and other soyfood consumption.
One thing that makes soy truly unique as a protective food is that it is one of the few foods that contains significant amounts of plant estrogens or phytoestrogens called isoflavones. These plant compounds are converted during the normal digestive process into a form of very weak estrogen. Back in 1982, Dr. Kenneth Setchell identified a phytoestrogen called equol in the urine of people who eat soy foods. Equol is structurally similar to the natural estrogen estradiol-17. Later, Dr. Herman Aldercreutz of the University of Helsinki found high levels of equol in the urine of Japaanese men and women who ate a soy-rich traditional diet. He found low levels of equol in women who had breast cancer, as opposed to cancer-free women.
Scientists from several countries have found much higher levels of another isoflavone called genistein in the urine of people eating a traditional Japanese soy-rich diet than in those eating a typical Western diet. Genistein is a powerful anticarcinogen, found only in soybeans. It appears to inhibit enzymes that promote tumor growth. Test tube experiments show that genistein can block the growth of prostate cancer cells and breast cancer cells. As well, genistein helps to promote something called differentation in cancerous cells. To explain this simply, the human body has specialized cells-- bone cells, heart cells, skin cells, etc.-- that have unique properties. When cells become cancerous, they "forget" what it was they were designed to do and begin to look the same. These so-called undifferentiated cells are very resistant to cancer therapies.
Another isoflavone found in soy is daidzein. Studies show that this isoflavone can also inhibit the growth of cancer cells and promote cell differentation.
Plant lignans are other phytoestrogens that occur widely in plant foods. Lignans are reported to have anticancer, antiviral, bactericidal, and fungistatic properties, and vegetarians have higher blood levels of them than do meat eaters.
Estrogens play a key role in the development of breast cancer. Among women who will eventually develop breast cancer, higher levels of active estrogen are present, apparently acting as a breast cancer promoter on a cellular level. For instance, estrogen increases cancer risk by binding to breast cells. Because isoflavones are so similar to human estrogen, they can attatch to estrogen receptors, effectively blocking the human estrogen. But, because they are much, much weaker than estrogen, they don't have the deadly effect that estrogens do. (Tamoxifen, a breast-cancer drug, works in the same way.)
Longer exposure to estrogen is a risk factor for breast cancer-- women who start to menstruate early and have a late menopause are at higher risk, because they have been exposed to potent estrogens for a longer period. Remaining childless and not breastfeeding are further risk factors, again because during pregnancy and round-the-clock breastfeeding (before periods return) there are less active forms of circulating estrogen than during menstruation.
One of the reasons that fat (and meat) in the diet may be a major factor in hormone-related cancers such as breast and prostate is that a high-fat diet promotes high estrogen levels. At the University of California, Los Angeles, School of medicine, David Heber placed women on a very low-fat diet (less than 10% of calories) for only three weeks. In that short time the women dropped an average of 50% in serum estradiol (a form of estrogen) levels (one dropped 80%!) Another study in Boston measured blood hormone levels as well as urine excretion levels in vegetarian and meat-eating women. The vegetarian women had increased fecal excretion of estrogen, decreased levels of estrogen in the bile, and lower levels in the blood, 11 to 20 % lower than those measured in the meat-eating women. Many other studies, as well as the epidemiologic studies, point to a low-fat, low-meat diet as another way to lower the amount of estrogen exposure in a woman's lifetime.
A longer time between menstrual periods also reduces exposure to estrogen. Kenneth Setchell, Ph.D., professor of Pediatics at Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Cincinnati, fed a group of women 60 g of textured soy protein daily for four weeks, and observed that the time between their menstrual cycles increased two to five days. 60 g of miso lengthened this by another day.
(By the way, natural progesterone produced by the body or derived from wild yams and soy, protects against breast cancer. Synthetic progestins, however, have been linked to breast cancer.)
Obesity after menopause is also considered a risk factor, because large amounts of estrogen can be made in the subcutaneous fatty tissue. This is another reason to become fit and as slim as your body is comfortable being (see Chapters II and III).
Dr. Robert M. Kradjian, in his book Save Yourself from Breast Cancer, which I urge every woman and girl to read, paints a sad picture of the Western girl who, eating an estrogen-promoting high-fat, high-protein diet, will start menstruating at about age 12 and have only one or two children, who will not be breastfed for very long, if at all, thereby having a much longer exposure to potent estrogens than her sisters in "less developed" countries. About half of American girls exhibit breast or pubic hair development by age nine! In China, Japan, the Philippines, and Africa, where breast cancer rates are much lower, the average age of menarche is 16 or 17, as it was in the U.S. 100 years ago, and breastfeeding is prolonged, also as it was 75 or more years ago in North America.
In men, estrogen also plays a part in prostate cancer. Estrogen is a precursor to androgens (male hormones), triggering the production of testosterone. Men with prostate cancer often have higher levels of testosterone than cancer-free men. The estrogen-blocking activities, as well as their tumor-inhibiting qualities, of soy isoflavones may therefore also play a part in preventing prostate cancer in men.
The cancer-protective claims for soy are called "speculative" by some, but the data is impressive. Soyfoods have clear benefits in protecting against heart disease and have been proven to have no negative side effects, so many scientists are advising us not to wait years for definitive studies, but to start reaping the benefits of the mighty soybean NOW!
And, of course, soy is only one part of a healthy, protective diet. As I have mentioned before, it's not a "magic bullet" or a "miracle food". A varied complex-carbohydrate, high-fiber, low-fat, low-protein, plant-based diet with regular vigorous exercise is a most important component in a healthy life. As Dr. Robert M. Kradjian says, it's unlikely that good health will come from a medicine bottle-- we must seek protection from disease through improved nutrition. Adding soy to such a plan will only add more benefits, but this doesn't mean isolating this or that protective substance from the soybean and taking it in a supplemental form. Just as we should get our antioxidants in the form of fresh fruits, vegetables, and legumes because we don't even know what all them are yet, and we're not sure how they all work in concert with one another, we aren't sure if the protective components of soybeans will work "out of context". Isoflavones may not do their work if not accompanied by the soy protein, for instance. It is a lesson that we in the West have yet to learn-- to trust the power of whole foods, rather than specific nutrients.
Bryanna Clark Grogan |
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4.) I've been told that it's not safe to feed soy to children. Is this true?
ADDED NOTE June 20, 2007: The ultimate in soy hysteria can be found here, where the author claims that feeding soy to your children will make them homosexual and reduce penis size, and that eating it as an adult will lower your libido AND make it impossible to conceive!
Many sources wildly exaggerate the effects of eating soyfoods. It's true that there may be concerns about ingesting soy isoflavones that are extracted and concentrated, but eating soy as food does not appear to be a problem for the vast majority of people. Check out the article at the link below, which is about vegetarian children and cites a "landmark study" done on the children of "The Farm" in Tennessee, a large commune started in the early 1970's. They had a vegan diet which was soy-based. The children, who are now adults and having their own children, have been studied for growth, health, etc... At the end of the article you can link to "click here for footnotes", and then, if you wish, get the medical publications on these studies, perhaps through your library.
MORE: I’ve just excerpted the material to do with soy and children from the following two articles, but you might like to read these two articles in full, to remind yourself of all areas of the “debate”.
EXCERPTS TO DO WITH CHILDREN AND SOY:
"Much of Fallon and Enig's criticism is generated from reports on the use of soy infant formulas. In 1998, K.O. Klein of the Department of Clinical Science at the A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, reported that soy-based infant formulas had been used for over 60 years and fed to millions of infants worldwide and studied in controlled research. Klein says the medical literature provides "no evidence of endocrine effects in humans from infant consumption of modern soy-based formulas. Growth is normal and no changes in timing of puberty or in fertility rates have been reported in humans who consumed soy formula as infants." [Nutrition Reviews 56: 193-204, 1998] The Journal of Pediatrics also conducted an earlier study that came to a similar conclusion. [Journal Pediatrics 124: 612-20, 1994]
With no supporting evidence, Fallon and Enig state that learning disabilities among male children have reached epidemic proportions and that soy infant feeding, which began in the 1970s, "cannot be ignored as a probable cause for these tragic developments." Yet no citations are listed to back up their claim. They go on to say that one percent of all girls show signs of puberty before the age of three and quote a 1997 report in the Journal of Pediatrics. But that report makes no mention of soy."
AND:
"According to an FDA scientific review, soy does not interfere with childhood growth, does not cause pancreatic or breast cancer, does not significantly interfere with mineral absorption as long as dietary consumption is adequate, does not induce early puberty, and does not interfere with fertility. Soy may induce allergies, but that is not sufficient reason to ban it from the marketplace.
Epidemiological studies do not confirm that soy accelerates the rate or incidence of brain aging nor does soy increase the prevalence of thyroid disorders. There is a consistent body of scientific evidence that soy protein consumption results in a significant reduction in total and LDL cholesterol for those whose cholesterol is elevated (above 250 mg per deciliter blood sample).* Approximately 25 grams of soy is needed to produce this health benefit. This is the asterisk noted earlier in this report. Soy doesn't lower cholesterol among individuals with normal blood fats.
It's not like soy hasn't been investigated thoroughly. Health reporter Jack Challem notes that in a three-year period from 1996-98, over 1000 articles on soy isoflavones were published in medical journals. But once the gate was opened for a health claim for soy (cholesterol reduction), the rest of the still-to-be-confirmed health claims were ushered in. Some scientific reports indicate soy can reduce hot flashes among menopausal females, promote bone formation and may reduce the risk of cancer. Consumers are likely to think that if a little bit of soy is OK, then more is even better. "
"DOES SOY CAUSE BIRTH DEFECTS?
One of the most alarming allegations in the Fallon and Enig article is that, due to the phytoestrogens in soyfoods, vegetarian diets promote birth defects. They repeatedly refer in the article and elsewhere to a study published in the British Journal of Urology that found baby boys born to vegetarian mothers were five times more likely to suffer from hypospadias, a malformation of the penis correctable with surgery. I found this disturbing, and somewhat difficult to believe, because I know of no other study that links vegetarian diets with a higher rate of any birth defect, including hypospadias, and there are a number that show the opposite - lower rates of a variety of birth defects in babies born to vegetarian mothers. If the findings of this study were valid, however, it would be extremely important.
We certainly need more studies to determine what is going on, but after reading the actual study I am not nearly as concerned as I was upon reading Fallon and Enig's description, because what they neglect to mention is the significant fact that the total number of baby boys in the study born with this condition to vegetarian mothers was only seven. And it was not just vegetarian women who were found to be at greater risk for delivering a boy with hypospadias. Women who took iron supplements during pregnancy, and women who had the flu during the first trimester, also were at heightened risk.
It's hard to know just what to make of this isolated study. To my eyes, it highlights how much we have yet to learn about the impact of the phytoestrogens contained in soy. Given our current state of knowledge, I think that pregnant women should largely avoid soy-based supplements. But there is no cause to conclude that vegetarian diets, or soyfoods, are suspect in pregnancy.
Vegetarian diets have consistently shown profound benefits for pregnancy and lactation, including much lower levels of the toxic chemicals that typically concentrate higher on the food chain in meat, fish and dairy products. A report in the New England Journal of Medicine on the levels of contamination in human breastmilk found that vegan mothers had dramatically lower levels of toxic chemicals in their milk compared to mothers in the general population. The highest level seen among these vegan mothers was actually lower than the lowest level seen in nonvegetarian mothers. In fact, the levels of contamination found in the milk of the vegetarian mothers was only 1 to 2 percent as great as the level found in the milk of nonvegetarians."
AND:
"INFANT SOY FORMULAS: BIRTH CONTROL PILLS FOR BABIES?
Another of the disturbing charges made by the soy bashers is the allegation that "an infant exclusively fed soy formula receives the estrogenic equivalent (based on body weight) of at least five birth control pills per day." Soy formula, say Fallon and Enig, amounts to "birth control pills for babies."
AND:
"These theoretical risks are quite disturbing, but they appear at this point to be merely theoretical, because we have yet to see any substantive evidence of this harm in people. It is striking that there have been no reports of hormonal abnormalities in people who were fed soy formula as infants - and this includes millions of people in the past 30 years. In fact a major study published in the August, 2001, Journal of the American Medical Association found that infants fed soy formula grow to be just as healthy as those raised on cow's milk formulas. If the phytoestrogens in soy were affecting the reproductive system of infants fed soy formulas, then soy-fed babies would develop reproductive health problems as adults. The study evaluated 811 men and women between the ages of 20 and 34 who had participated in soy and cow's milk studies as infants. No significant differences were found between the groups in more than 30 health areas. The major exception was that women who had been soy-fed reported slightly longer menstrual periods (one-third of a day) than women raised on cow's milk formulas.
The debate as to which is better, formulas based on soy or cow's milk, is unresolved. Each seems to have its own dangers. What is indisputable is that babies reared on breastmilk have tremendous health advantages over babies reared on any type of formula. Compared to babies who are fed soy or cow's milk based formulas, babies who are beast-fed for at least six months have three times fewer ear infections, five times fewer urinary tract infections, five times fewer serious illnesses of all kinds, seven times fewer allergies, and are fourteen times less likely to be hospitalized. Babies who are breast-fed spit up less often, have less diarrhea and less constipation. For every 87 formula-fed babies who die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, only three breast-fed babies die from the disease. Babies who are fed only human milk for at least six months are six times less likely to develop lymphoma, a cause of cancer, in childhood. Babies breast-fed for at least one year are only half as likely to develop diabetes. Children who were fed human milk have an average I.Q. seven points higher.
As adults, people who were breast-fed have less asthma, fewer allergies, less diabetes, fewer skin problems including dermatitis, lower risks of heart attacks and stroke due to lower cholesterol levels, less ulcerative colitis (ulcers in the large intestines), less Crohn's disease, and protection from certain chronic liver diseases.
The indisputable advantages of breast-feeding apply to mothers, too, affording major reductions of breast cancer risk. Yet working mothers wanting to breast-feed are often faced with a formidable challenge, because few workplaces have daycare facilities for their workers or allow for breast-feeding breaks. In 1998, New York Representative Carolyn Maloney sought to change that, introducing a bill in Congress that would provide a mandated daily one hour of unpaid leave for expressing breast milk, plus provide incentives for employers who created a "lactation-friendly" environment.
The evidence that breast is best is overwhelming. Infants breast-fed by vegetarian mothers have all these advantages, plus more, because the milk of vegetarian mothers has the added advantage of harboring substantially fewer residues from pesticides and other toxic chemicals. Yet the anti-soy crusader Sally Fallon would evidently prefer that an infant be fed a cow's milk formula rather than breastmilk, if the mother is a vegetarian. She writes that "breast milk is best IF the mother has consumed a …diet…rich in animal proteins and fat throughout her pregnancy and continues to do so while nursing her child."
Why would someone make a statement like that? Where are these soy antagonists coming from? What are they trying to prove?
Fallon and Enig are proponents of the philosophy that in order to be healthy people must eat large amounts of saturated fat from animal products. They insist that only with the regular consumption of lard, butter and other full fat dairy products, and beef, can people derive the nutrients they need to be healthy. They deplore the fact that soy products are increasingly replacing animal products in the American diet.
Many of the most vocal soy bashers are of similar dietary persuasions. Joseph Mercola, for example, a Chicago osteopath who has authored a series of vehemently anti-soy articles that have circulated widely on the internet, is an ardent advocate of eating beef, chicken, turkey, ostrich, and other meats." (I put the bold type in-- BCG)
And what about the dark side of meat?
There are a lot more serious things in the North American diet to worry about than soy! If you don’t want to eat soy, fine. But, you can feel much better about eating tofu than eating a number of common items in the N. American diet, like, say, processed meats. Just as a “for instance”, in a new book called “How to Prevent and Treat Cancer with Natural Medicine” (by Michael T. Murray, ND; Tim Birdsall, ND; Joseph E. Pizzorno, ND; and Paul Reilly, ND) (NOT a vegetarian book, by the way), read:
"Children who eat 12 hot dogs per month have nearly 10 times the risk of developing leukemia compared with children who do not eat hot dogs.
Children who eat hot dogs once a week double their chances of brain tumors; eating them twice a week triples the risk.
Pregnant women who eat two servings per day of any cured meat have more than double the risk of bearing children who have brain cancer.
Kids who eat the most ham, bacon and cured sausage have 3 times the risk of lymphoma.
Kids who eat ground meat once a week have twice the risk of acute lymphocytic leukemia compared to those who eat none; eating 2 or more hamburgers weekly tripled the risk."
(Footnotes: Preston-Martin S, Pogoda JM, Mueller BA, et al. Maternal Consumption of cured meats and vitamins in relation to pediatric brain tumors. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 1996;5:599-605.
Blot WJ, Henderson BE, Boice JD Jr. Childhood cancer in relation to cured meat intake: review of epidemiological evidence. Nutr Cancer 199;34:111-18)
AND, they also write: “ The most important foods to avoid: Meats grilled or broiled at high temperatures.”
And the following is from a new book called “Fresh Choices”, by David Joachim and Rochelle Davis (executive director and founder of Generation Green, a non-profit advocacy group that promotes awareness of environmental health issues){Rodale Press, 2004) which is not a vegetarian book by any means. It advises on what are the groceries that are important to buy organic and which are low-pesticide even though not organic:
"When the International Agency for Research on Cancer (an arm of the World Health Organization) looked at the diets of nearly half a million Europeans, they found that those who ate more cured meats like hot dogs, sausage, salami, bacon, bologna, and deli meats had a 50% increase in colon cancer risk. In the United States, Cornell University researchers looked at 12 different studies and concluded that eating processed meats can increase breast cancer risk. And a recent study from Harvard University School of Public Health found that eating too much processed meat may increase risk of Type 2 diabetes. Nitrites are the suspected culprit, as previous studies have already linked nitrites to increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, the kind that most often afflicts children."
There are a lot more North Americans out there wolfing down charred hamburgers, salami, ham and hotdogs, than they are tofu burgers and veggie dogs! In 1987, in fact, the per capita consumption of tofu and other soyfoods in the USA was less than 1 percent that of meat. Even today, if we multiply that by 5 or even 10, it’s still a tiny amount compared to the amount of meat being eaten.
AND WHAT ABOUT THE TRAGIC DEATH OF BABY CROWN SHAKUR, DUBBED "DEATH BY VEGANISM"?
In her New York Times op-ed piece, Nina Planck blamed the 6-week old baby's death (from a diet of only plain soymilk-- not formula or breastmilk-- and apple juice) on veganism. Here is my letter on the subject:
"The fact is that it does not matter whether the parents were vegan or not! They were ignorant, ill-informed, stupid-- I don't know. But the fact is that if they had fed their baby COW'S milk and apple juice (and obviously not enough of it anyway) the same thing would have happened! ALL babies at least until a year and preferably for 2 years, should be breastfed or fed formula, not any kind of plain milk. There are millions of babies in the world who thrive for a year or more ONLY on breastmilk, even when their mothers are malnourished. It is only when they are weaned to inadequate food that they fail to thrive!
"They're not vegans, they're baby killers," Fulton prosecutor Mike Carlson told the jury Tuesday during his closing arguments.
This has NOTHING to do with vegan diet! The people at the Farm, where my publishers are based, must be cringing at this stupid reporting, since their babies thrived on mothers milk and, later, a vegan diet. My friend Holly, a 3rd generation veegtarian, now vegan, raised 2 incredibly healthy vegan kids.
This is about ignorance, or child abuse, or both-- NOT veganism!
IN ADDITION: the author of that article is a Weston A Price follower-- she believes that people can't even get pregnant while eating a vegan diet! She believes that soy is poison and that we should eat lots of meat, lard, butter, etc.. She believes in feeding children raw cow's milk. She writes"...it is difficult to get pregnant, sustain a healthy pregnancy, and to have sufficient and nutritious breast milk on a vegan diet." This is patent nonsense and she is not without an anti-vegetarian, never mind vegan, agenda.. Ask the American Dietetic Association (ADA)! Here is a quote from their paper on vegetarian diet:
"Well-planned vegan and lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy and lactation. Appropriately planned vegan and lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets satisfy nutrient needs of infants, children, and adolescents and promote normal growth (37). Dietary deficiencies are most likely to be observed in populations with very restrictive diets. All vegan children should have a reliable source of vitamin B-12 and, if sun exposure is limited, vitamin D supplements or fortified foods should be used. Foods rich in calcium, iron, and zinc should be emphasized. Frequent meals and snacks and the use of some refined foods and foods higher in fat can help vegetarian children meet energy needs. Guidelines for iron and vitamin D supplements and for the introduction of solid foods are the same for vegetarian and nonvegetarian infants. When it is time for protein-rich foods to be introduced, vegetarian infants can have pureed tofu, cottage cheese, and legumes (pureed and strained). Breast-fed vegan infants should receive a source of vitamin B-12 if the mother’s diet is not supplemented and a source of vitamin D if sun exposure is inadequate."
Here are some resources by medical professionals:
http://www.scienzavegetariana.it/rubriche/cong2002/vegcon_infant_diet_en.html
http://www.keepkidshealthy.com/WELCOME/treatmentguides/veganchildren.html
http://www.vegsource.com/parent/growing_vegans.htm (the authors are registered dieticians)
5.) I've heard that tofu is fattening-- how can that be?
I eat soyfoods all the time and I pay close attention to fat and calories. Sure, you can use low-fat soymilk (or, what I used to do before I started making my own—use a rich soymilk like Vitasoy and dilute with water, 1/2 and 1/2), and low-fat soy flour, if you like, but I don’t bother with "lite" tofu. A 12.3 oz. box of silken tofu contains only about 150 calories in total!
As for regular tofu, it has a bad reputation because 50 percent of its calories are from fat. But the total amount of calories in tofu is very low, much lower than equivilant amounts of meat or even avocado or nuts, and much lower than eggs, oil and solid cooking fats. A serving of tofu contains only about 80 calories—that would be about 6 oz. silken tofu, 4 oz. medium-firm tofu, 3 oz. firm tofu, or 2 oz. extra-firm tofu.
As an example of this, you can use tofu in baking instead of oil and eggs, to save fat and calories—when I use 8 oz. of medium-firm regular tofu in a muffin recipe for 12 muffins, each muffin contains only 1 gram of fat. A traditional “low-fat” recipe with 1 large egg and 1/4 cup oil (not counting any nuts) would result in muffins containing about 5 g fat per muffin.
We do need some fat in our diets, and the fat in soy is good for us. Ordinarily I would not use soy oil, because it is extracted chemically. But, in its natural state in a soyfood, it is good for us.
6.) I just read in this article that soy kills sperm! Can this be true?
This is seriously bad reporting. The reporter neglected to mention that estrogens from other sources (such as hops-- what, no beer???) were tested, and she focused only on soy! Now this is going around like wildfire. Read this article for the actual story:
Here are two more articles:
In addition, some of the many other plant foods that contain phytoestrogens are: flax, coffee (!!), red clover, alfalfa sprouts, sunflower seeds, pomegranate, fennel, licorice, yucca, oregano, nutmeg, tumeric, thyme, goldenseal, cumin, camomille, cloves, and cottonseed oil, and many wild greens and herbs (see the article link just below for a longer list).
We should be more worried about the artificial estrogens found the paints, cleaning agents, pesticides, and herbicides mentioned in the article than the ones in soy or other plant foods . The author of this article points this out in http://www.fibrocystic.com/phyto.htm
"Plants produce chemicals that mimic estrogen and/or block estrogen, and/or block progesterone. The human body has receptors to both estrogen and progesterone. These receptors will respond not only to the body's hormones, but also plant hormones. In general, phytoestrogens are thought to wash out of the body within several days in contrast to months or decades that the synthetic chemical xenoestrogens take to be excreted. Whole grains, fruits, seeds, beans and herbs all are know to have estrogen and/or progesterone activity. The most famous is soy. In general, any food that has been eaten by a culture or people group for centuries is probably all right to eat if the people group in question is relatively free from these estrogen related diseases."
An aquaintance wrote this:
"I was thinking about that article on soya this morning. I lived at The Farm in Tennessee where we ate soy products every single day - tofu, tempeh, soybeans, ice bean, etc. ad nauseum. It was our main source of protein. During the ten years I was there, I never heard of anyone having an infertility problem. In fact, fertility was the problem, as we had far more kids than we could take care of."
And why is it thought necessary by the Chinese government to have the unfortunate and often tragic "one-child only" policy in China, where soy is eaten on a daily basis? |
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7.) Friends have told me that I shouldn't eat soy, that it's "poison" and can cause all kinds of health problems. Is this really true?
Some people are allergic to soy, but then, some people are allergic to wheat, corn , peanuts and many other foods-- that does not mean that they are bad for the rest of us! There is some serious "soy-bashing" going on out there and some of the claims are downright ridiculous! Do your research and make an informed decision!
Soyfoods are, in fact, one of the MOST studied foods in history—studies on soy and humans go back to the turn of the 20th century. Soy is not a “miracle” food, but it is a source of inexpensive and high-quality protein, with proven anti-carcinogenic, antioxidant and cholesterol-lowering properties.
Here are some articles disputing the anti-soy theories, taking a point-by-point approach:
An appendix to the huge online report on dairy called "White Lies" by the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation of the UK (VVF)-- THE SAFETY OF SOY (supported by Professor T. Colin Campbell PhD, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; and Professor Jane Plant CBE (DSc, CEng), Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine Professor and Professor of Applied Geochemistry at Imperial College in London, among others).
An article by health reporter Bill Sardi
From vegan writer John Robbins, author of “Diet for a New America”, “The Food Revolution”, “May All Be Fed”, and “Reclaiming Our Health”; founder of EarthSave International:
http://www.foodrevolution.org/what_about_soy.htm
and
http://www.foodrevolution.org/askjohn/52.htm
(this article is specifically about the charge that soy causes dementia)
and
http://www.foodrevolution.org/mothering.htm
(John's respones to the anti-soy article in Mothering Magazine, plus link to other responses)
An article by registered dietician Brenda Davis, co-author of "Becoming Vegetarian" and "Becoming vegan":
An article by vegan registered dietician Reed Mangels, PhD, RD
A good article from the April 2003 issue of Vegetarian Times magazine
An article by Virginia Messina, RD and Dr. Mark Messina
A comment by Dr. Justine Butler about an article in the Guardian villifying soy.
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8.) Some people assert that traditional consumption of soy in Asian countries has been mainly of fermented foods, but that, on the whole, soy is not a mainstay; and that soymilk and tofu are relatively recent introductions to the Asian diet. Is this true?
This is untrue. The average Taiwanese eats 64 lbs. of tofu a year! As of 1991, there were thirty-eight-thousand tofu shops in Japan.
According to Chinese tradition, soybeans were one of the five sacred crops named by Chinese emperor Sheng-Nung, who reigned five thousand years ago! Sheng-Nung mentioned soybeans in his Ben Tsao Gang Mu, written in 2838 BC! By 300 BC, soybeans and millet were always mentioned in the ancient texts as the two major food crops in Northern China. There is archaeological evidence in the form of a kitchen scene in a Han tomb in Northern China, clearly depicting the preparation of soymilk and tofu. This would be AD 25-100. Tofu is first mentioned in a document in 965 AD: the Ch'ing I Lu by T'ao Ku. The story implies that tofu was widely consumed in China in those days.
In Japan, even today, the words tofu, miso and shoyu (soy sauce) are commonly preceded in everyday speech by the honorific prefix o—most people saying “o-tofu”, or “honorable tofu”, showing the reverence for the noble soybean in their culture.
According to Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s data from long-running The Oxford-Cornell China Project, the percentage of foods of animal origin in the Chinese diet was found to be 0-20 percent of calories, compared to 60-80% in North America. The Project found that much of the protein eaten in rural China is from soyfoods and that 80-90% of legume intake was from soyfoods. William Shurtleff (world-recognized expert and researcher on TRADITIONAL Asian soyfoods) writes in “History of Soybeans and Soyfoods in China (1949 to 1980s)”: “Prior to 1949 and up until about the mid-1960s, most Chinese, especially peasants, ate meat only three times a year, on their great festivals: New Year's, Autumn Festival, and Dragon Festival…Chinese derived 2.60 kg of protein per person per year from these animal products. By comparison, the average Chinese consumed 8.3 kg of soybeans containing 38% protein. Assuming that 95% were consumed directly with 90% protein recovery, these soyfoods provided the average Chinese with about 2.69 kg of protein per year, slightly more than was derived from animal products.”
Excerpt of letter from Susan Marie Yoshihara to The Island Word, Courtenay, BC, April 2005:
"My husband Yoshi was born and raised in Japan on a farm in the traditional Japanese peasant way of life. When he was a child his family (and, no doubt everyone else in the village) almost never ate meat. They ate fish occasionally, but tofu was a food they had almost everyday. This was before the era of refrigeration. Early most mornings the tofu vendor from the nearest town would arrive on his bicycle selling a variety of freshly made tofu and other soy products.
Yoshi has now been in Canada for 34 years. All this time we have continued to eat a mainly simple, plant based diet. There hasn't been a time during our 34 year long relationship when we didn't eat tofu. We have raised two healthy sons. Both are intellectually and physically well-endowed. Our elder son is now a scientist and the younger is a university student in Montreal. I got my BA in Pacific and Asian Studies from UVic in 2003. Tofu obviously doesn't rot your brain. And I've got a lot to say about how tofu can help with menopause but I want to keep this letter as short as possible, so I won't.
Over the past 30 years I've taken many trips to Japan and stayed there for extended periods. I've lived with families, studied miso making, Japanese culture and the language. I've shopped in the supermarkets and in corner stores. Even the 7-11 sells tofu. I've eaten in fancy places, temples, bars, and "greasy chopstick" cafes. No matter what the season or location, tofu is extremely common and soyfoods are almost always on the menu in some form."
Susan-Marie Yoshihara
Denman Island, B.C"
SOY IN OTHER ASIAN COUNTRIES:
Tempeh is the fermented soy product that originated in Indonesia. Little is known of how soybeans and soyfoods were introduced to Indonesia, where Buddhism was only of temporary importance, in about the eighth century. The soybeans may have been introduced by Chinese immigrants; in some way tempeh was developed and became the most popular soyfood, followed by tofu, miso (taucho), and soy sauce (kechap). Here is a quote from a website on Indonesian food: "Tofu and Tempeh - Both made from soy beans, tofu and tempeh are common foods in Indonesia. While tofu has a smooth texture, tempeh is rougher because the soy beans remain whole. Tempeh is more of a specialty, but both must be tried to get the authentic Indonesian experience." http://www.goshen.edu/sst/indonesia/cuisine.php
Here is some interesting information from this article.
"Tofu has a long history | |
