The Soy Story
Why aren’t soy foods part of the rejuvenation diet, since they are promoted as a good food for women, especially women going through menopause? Some experts even say that eating or drinking soy foods actually has a calming effect on hot flashes.
Here’s what nutritionist Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN, author of the book, The Whole Soy Story, has to say about it: “Soy is not a miracle food! Soy is not the answer to world hunger! Soy is not a panacea! Soy has not even been proven safe!”
In her book, Daniel blows the lid off of processed soy, the kind that is packaged and marketed as a health food. Daniel says that, without realizing it, many of us are overconsuming soy in cooking oil, milk, yogurt, cheese, candy bars, frozen dinners, ice cream, mayonnaise, salad dressings, soy sauce, MSG, bakery products, snack foods and many other foods where you wouldn’t expect to find it. Soy is a ubiquitous ingredient in low-carb foods, and is promoted as: a healthy alternative to meat (it is an incomplete protein), a non-allergenic dairy food (many children are allergic to it), a low-cost protein that could feed the world’s starving people (it is not a traditional food and therefore not well accepted except in some parts of Asia), and a food that can help reduce your risks for heart disease (no more so than many other fiber-rich, legumes).
Ahoy, Soy!
Soy was brought to American shores from China and Japan by missionaries, traders, botanists, and sea captains who used it as ballast on their ships as well as an ingredient in meals. In 17th century France, soy sauce was the secret ingredient used in court banquets. Ben Franklin sent soybeans home and recommended that the bean be grown in America. Although the beans were planted, soy didn’t generate much interest among farmers until a century later.
America was slow to accept soy, but by 1935, the acreage in soybeans grown for oil equaled the acreage in crop rotation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With the exception of beans grown for oil, soybeans were ignored as a food ingredient until it was reborn as a “health food.”
Selling Soy to the Masses
Soy, pitched to us as a “low-cost wonder food,” transformed the lowly soy bean into one of the world’s largest industries. In the forties, soy was marketed to the poor and vegetarians as a meat substitute. Before that, the health benefits of soybeans were extolled by no less an American food “apostle” than John Harvey Kellogg, the Battle Creek cereal maker, who championed the health benefits of soy foods and soy milk, first, for vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists treated at his Battle Creek Sanitarium, a health spa based on Seventh Day Adventist health and diet concepts, and supported by the Adventist Church (he was a member), and later, for all Americans. For a delightful history of the “bean crusades,” see Kaayla Daniel’s amusing account of the Kellogg ad campaign for the “vegetable cow,” in her book, The Whole Soy Story.
Selling Waste
There was a lot of soy pulp left over from making soy oil and soy milk and the original consumers who bought these products represented niche markets, too small to make a dent in the ocean of processed soy pulp drowning the food industry. The industrialist and magnate Henry Ford took up the banner and campaigned for soy, except his interest was in its industrial uses. Ford believed that soy plastics would be the material of the future for car bodies, home appliances, and window frames. He appeared in public sporting ties and suits made of soy fiber cloth. Unfortunately, the car was abandoned because of the strong smell of decay that emanated from it, and the clothing was itchy when dry, and smelled like a wet dog when wet. Ford made and distributed soybean biscuits to popularize eating soy foods, but they fared no better than soy auto parts in Ford’s hands. People said they tasted terrible. Fast forward to the era of health foods.
America Discovers Health Foods
As health foods became available and increasingly popular in the nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties, soy milk, tofu, and “Tofurkey” emerged as “healthy substitutes” for cow’s milk, cheese, and turkey. Vegetarians, hippies, environmentalists, and groups against cruelty to animals rallied around soy as the solution to world hunger, rising infant mortality rates, diseases of aging, and environmental pollution. People who had trouble digesting milk as adults were prompted to turn to soy milk as a healthy alternative. Kids took it in their lunchboxes, and young adults enjoyed it in smoothies, yogurt, and snacks of soymilk and soy cookies. Soy foods were featured in organic supermarkets and fast became the iconic health foods of the age!
In 1999, the FDA authorized the use of a heart health claim for soy, stipulating that 25 grams of soy protein per day, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease, and foods containing at least 6.25 grams of soy protein per serving could make that claim. The rationale offered was that Asians consume at least 25 grams of soy protein daily and have low rates of heart disease. Now we know that Asians consume much less soy than that and mainly as fermented soy, a form in which most of the toxic substances in soy (phytates, trypsin, and hemoglutenins) are broken down and destroyed.
With a push by soy food manufacturers to use up their leftover soy pulp, a bean that was primarily grown for cattle feed, one that never was a natural part of the American diet, was suddenly hailed and touted, not only as a good food, but as a food that was like a drug in that it combatted heart disease, a deadly killer among midlife men and women. At the same time that the FDA approved a heart health claim for soy, the agency listed soy in its Poisonous Plants Database. In this database, the FDA warns of goiter, growth problems, amino acid deficiencies, food allergies, mineral malabsorption, endocrine disruption, and cancer among the ill effects of consuming soy.
How did soy become a health food when it has been tied to cancer, thyroid deficiency, infertility, poor libido in men, and life-threatening dangers for infants who drink soy-based formulas and become deficient in essential nutrients needed for normal development? It became a health food because the industry needed to get rid of soy waste products.
What’s more, shouldn’t consumers know that estrogenic compounds in soy are natural anti-fertility agents, blamed for the plummeting sperm levels of American men over the last forty years?
Choosing Profit Over Health
There has been an explosion of new processed food products in supermarkets since the 1960s, and the fact that most processed foods (79% of the foods in the supermarket) contain soy oil, a relatively cheap oil, meant that there was going to be a problem for the industry in getting rid of leftover pulp from making soy oil. In fact, there was so much waste from making soy oil that the industry found itself with a huge problem. The sludge from making oil could neither be dumped (not legally) nor sold as a food unless there was a compelling rationale for selling it to consumers.
Glance at men’s fitness magazines to see what the marketers decided to do. Page after page is filled with color ads for soy-based candy bars and instant beverages which are promoted as a way to create the perfect abs, have great sex, and become a “macho man.” How ironic that soy actually lowers testosterone levels and sperm counts in men, facts that the editors of the magazine either don’t know or would never mention because if they did, their ad revenues would dry up and the magazine might go belly up!
To cap it off, among the 8oo certified heart-healthy foods published by the American Heart Association, only one choice is a soy food. It is offered as one of many options in the milk category. So it appears that the FDA is out on a limb on this one - the only major health organization offering a ringing endorsement of soy protein foods!
Our bodies are not designed to safely metabolize more than a small amount of soy in our diets. For our long-term health, we should consume soy products sparingly if at all. But as long as food and consumer magazines publish glossy ads for commercial soy products with a healthy endorsement from the FDA, and without any cautions about health dangers, consumers will continue to consume soy believing it is a health food. Infant formulas made of soy will continue to be offered in the US without any warnings about health dangers, despite published advisories in several countries, including Israel, that soy is unsafe for children under two years of age.
The US soy foods revolution has given false hope to millions and put countless numbers of Americans at risk with ad campaigns indicating that eating soy foods may prevent cancer. Cancer is a multi-stage disease that is influenced by genetics, diet, lifestyle, environment, and other factors that affect an individiual’s vulnerability. There is no blanket approach that works for everyone and what may reduce risk in one person may increase it in another so it makes no sense for food manufacturers to market their products under the faux flag of anti-cancer protection.
Recently, studies have associated eating soy with a two to three-times greater risk for bladder cancer. Soy has been blamed for an increase in thyroid cancer, because soy isoflavones are known to induce goiters and thyroid tumors. Trypsin inhibitors in soy protein contribute to or cause pancreatic cancers, and soy estrogens have been linked to leukemia in infants.
Soy is not a panacea, but used in moderation, it is an acceptable food, but no more a health food than any other fresh-picked green or bean!