Soy Soy everywhere and not a bite to eat!

In My Humble Opinion
1

This isn’t really a pitting, just a bit of a lament followed (hopefully) by some discussion and advice-giving.

I just found out that I am allergic to Soy.

Also Nightshades (Potatoes, Tomatoes, Peppers). Less so with them, so I can still handle them well enough. But geez, if he had said I was also allergic to Dairy, I would have asked him to simply kill me!

Almost simultaneously (well, as a result of finding out and then looking about), I discovered how soy is in every goddamned prepared food on the planet. Donuts are usually boiled in Soy oil (the sound you hear is my heart breaking. Not DONUTS!!!), every bread in the grocery store contains soy oil. (Not bagels, though) It’s even in my freaking ICE CREAM!!! (soy lecithin) Worse than that, it’s in the sherbet and even the Juice Coolers!

Today I talked to a friend who is also soy allergic. She eats bread and ice cream and so forth, but must carefully watch her consumption. Hard when her hubby works for a chinese food wholesaler. (I love chinese too.) Obviously I’m not deathly allergic to it either, so I will be able to eat these foods, just not as much as I previously consumed. But I may have to go back to making my own bread and ice cream, something I did about 12 years ago but stopped when I started brewing (you don’t want bread yeast getting into the beer or mead!)

Hey, wait a minute! One bright and shining light out of this is that I now have a valid medical excuse not to eat Tofu or drink Soy Milk! Woo-hoo!

Anyone else out there allergic to Soy? Moreso or less so? Care to share your coping experiences or lament lost foods?

2

How did you find out about your allergy? What are the symptoms to being allergic to soy?

3

OK, before we get to the “coping strategies” part, I have to ask you a few questions:

  1. What are your “allergic” symptoms?

  2. Who told you that you are allergic, and what are their qualifications for doing so?

  3. Normally, when you are allergic to a food it becomes completely forbidden - so what is the rationale for you to be able to eat “some”?

All that said - as a food allergy suffere myself, I wind up cooking a lot of stuff from scratch, using basic, unmodified food items. There is almost no “prepared” foods I can eat. That’s how most food allergics wind up.

4

First off, don’t learn to speak Spanish. There’s a hailstorm of soys in that.

5

My Mom’s allergic to soy: her reaction is that her voice suddenly (and rather dramatically) deepens, to the point people hearing her call her ‘sir’.

It was pretty obvious that something was up, and between trial and error along with allergy testing to confirm it.

The solution? Avoid soy, which is harder than it seems at first, like you’ve found out. There are some commercially prepared breads without soy available: be prepared to constantly check labels however, because recipies may change.

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