I’m eating a lot of soy beans because I want to have a health diet, but I just saw this article. So what is the straight dope on soy? Is there any truth to the article?
I don’t have a specific link for the soy arguement, but that website seems to be a bunch of ultra-vegan/alternative nonsense. Heck, this “doctor” encourages herbal alternative treatments for such things as skin cancer and hypothyroidism. And, on the topic of women’s health from another part of the site:
I think you’re safe to keep eating the soy beans.
You will excuse me, but I don’t understand a word you just wrote. If a site is anti-soy, how could they be ultra-vegan?
From doing a few quick web searches, I found a bunch more anti-soy article, including this.. Is there any truth to any of there arguments?
Exactly. The whole site gets rather self-contradictory…it seems there are different contributing authors.
Your question has been asked on the board before with no definitive answers. Google searches reveal extreme answers from both pro- and anti-soybean people, with little hard science. However…they’re beans. They aren’t a miracle food, but they aren’t a newly created food item either. Think moderation; too much of any food can cause health problems.
Just a WAG, but a lot of soy is GM, and that’s a bugbear amongst people who are into “natural” stuff.
Everything causes cancer if you consume ridiculously large amounts of it. The phrase “everything in moderation” comes to mind.
I wouldn’t worry about “eating a lot of soy beans”. If you are eating soy beans, soy ice cream, soy burgers, soy nuts, soy crackers, soy mayonnaise, drinking soy milk, soy tea, soy shakes, making bread with soy flour, and brushing your teeth with soy toothpaste, then you might have a problem.
Be careful with soy sauce: Soy Sauce
Just in case that did not work: http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals/ijto/vol2n1/soy.xml
Gah! It’s like The Jungle without the injured workers.
Snopes says that soy-cancer link is undetermined. Though, of course, a column by Cecil would be much better 
Just a WAG, but a lot of soy is GM, and that’s a bugbear amongst people who are into “natural” stuff.
But most of the GM soy ends up not in the soy products the people into “Natural/vegetarian” food buy, but in normal, everyday food - fed to chickens and cows, but the meat from the animals isn’t marked with GM warnings; soy byproducts used in bread and ready-made foods and chips, etc.
Given how little people know of long-term effects of GM, why is it laughable to be cautios? Esp. given the documented bad effects on the enviorment, avoiding GM foods is a good idea, I think.
The cancer center where my mom got treated for breast cancer and her doctor both told her to avoid soy. That may have been a case of better safe than sorry though.
IANAD, but isn’t the soy–>cancer link more of a soy–>phytoestrogen–>certain cancers link? I’ve only heard of it linked to cancers of the female reproductive system (breasts included).
A slight hi-jack but does anybody have any links to studies that examine the rising rates of reproductive cancers in women in the western world to determine if there is any correlation with rising soy consumption as well as hormone-replacement therapies for menopausal women?
It is easy to avoid “stewed-hair” soy sauce. Read the label; if you see the words hydrolized protein, :eek: put it back on the shelf. A proper soy sauce will contain soy, water, and salt. A little preservative is OK. It isn’t hard to find the right stuff. Kikkoman is done right. However, right now I’m using Kroger’s house brand. You don’t have to use stewed hair if you don’t want to.
I have a bottle of Kikkoman’s and the first ingredient is wheat. 
Okay, I goofed there. :smack: Wheat is not hair, though.
I was taught in food school by people who studied soy=cancer first-hand. The current best guess is that Soy can make certain cancers (classified as estrogen-response tumors and usually reproductive in origin) worse and has no benefit on most other cancers. The only tentative benefit may be consumption of soy in larger amounts before puberty.
I dunno. I loves me my hydrolised protein. A few years back, here in Sydney, there was a health scare about hydrolised protein, and all my Vietnamese friends who live on the stuff panicked and switched to the recommended brewed soy (such as Kikkoman). The trouble is, the brewed stuff is not the right flavour for Vietnamese food (fine for Japanese), and after the health scare was forgotten, they all went back to what they were using before. I don’t know about the States, but in Australia the hydrolised protein can’t be labelled “soy” at all. The popular Maggi brand calls itself “seasoning”, but they are not shy about the “hydrolised vegetable protein” label either, and that appears in only slightly smaller type below “seasoning”. You don’t need to go hunting for it in five point type in the ingredients list.
I don’t know why, but I feel like my question has not been answered to my satisfaction. For instance, the article says “Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines”. This is either true, not true, or there is no evidece to support this, making the sites claims lies.
IANAD, but I’d be willing to bet a rather large amount of money that consuming ridiculously large amounts of bleach does not only not cause cancer, but actually does a very good job of preventing cancer.