I’ve eaten some soy products on purpose (edamame and a brief flirtation with soy milk), but I’m sure the vast majority of my past soy consumption was hidden (in chocolate … to just about everything processed). After reading about some of the dangers of soy in Nina Planck’s Real Food, I cleaned out my cupboards of all products with vegetable oil, including my former favorite salad dressing that contained soybean oil.
Acording to Kaayla T. Daniel, Ph.D., hundreds of epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies link soy to:
- Malnutrition
- Digestive distress
- Thyroid dysfunction
- Cognitive decline
- Reproductive disorders
- Infertility
- Birth defects
- Immune system breakdown
- Heart disease
- Cancer
“Second generation soy foods are manufactured using high heat and pressure, chemical solvents, acids and alkalis, extruders and other harsh tools that are very likely to contain or produce toxic or carcinogenic residues.”
— Kaayla T Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story
Soy protein is a big staple of the vegan and vegetarian diet, in tofu and powder form just to name a couple of popular items. Interestingly, even some vegans are recognizing the dangers are soy, and bill themselves as soy-free.
Listen to the piece below for an audio interview with Sally Fallon about why soy is toxic.
What about Asians who eat soy, and seem to be healthier than we are? The soy they eat is fermented soy, as in soy sauce, which is not the toxic chemically-altered kind that’s in our American industrial food; they also eat smaller quantities of soy overall. Small quantities of the fermented products of soy sauce, miso and tempeh are fine for healthy people, especially if they have been slowly fermented over time, to maximize the reduction of toxins in soy.
For further information, check out this Soy Alert from the Weston A. Price Foundation. Be well!
27 March 2012 Update: Check out Food Renegade for more research on dangers of soy http://www.foodrenegade.com/dangers-of-soy/
The Healthy, Happy Eater 