Why is Soy Milk bad for you?

What's The Story With Soy

Years ago, when i first became a vegetarian I was exposed to the good and bad soy stories. I hit the library, the internet, spoke to my doctor, and asked a few questions in vegan forums. I still do a little research once in a while to help people with questions here.

Sometimes I find a question that gets repeated over and over again here that I think is a good question that I can shed some light on. At those times, I take a page out of Windingo's book and boiler plate my answer.

So here is my second version of What's The Story With Soy?

Soy milk is a great replacement for cow's milk."It's a good source of protein, vitamin A, B12, vitamin D, potassium, and isoflavones. Soy milk contains almost as much protein as cow's milk, yet is lower in calories than whole milk and comparable to skim milk."1

Tofu appears to be an almost perfect food. About 40% of its calories come from protein. which is comparable to skinless chicken breast. But it has less fat and more calcium and iron than chicken. It also has significant amounts of 8 other vitamins and minerals.

If an adult replaced all meat and dairy with soy and tofu, they would increase their intake of folate, vitamin K, calcium, magnesium, iron and fiber. And lower the total cholesterol intake by about 125 milligrams per day and saturated fat by about 2.4 grams per day. These nutritional changes, in turn, would lower risk of several chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases. 2

There are dozens of stories about health risks of soy. One of the common ones is about how soy milk can make men grow boobies. After doing an extremely thorough search, I did find one actual report of this. ONE. and that guy drank like a gallon of soy milk a day. But this "risk" is commonly reported (without citations) in magazine articles. 3

Another ofter repeated story is that somehow soy is associated with thyroid dis-function. I've even seen thyroid cancer listed as an adverse effect of soy. In fact, just now I checked searched google and on the first page found four articles connecting soy to thyroid cancer and at least that many to thyroid problems. However, all of this seems to only have one study to base their facts on. And that was a 1960 study on infants drinking a soy milk formula. the results of the test were inconclusive. and after a lot of other tests (not sure how many) no other evidence has been found linking soy and thyroid problems. But this myth is commonly stated as an adverse health risk by magazines and blogs. 4

As you do research on soy, one thing you will notice is that most of the "bad" articles come from "Mercola" and Weston A Pierce. Who is Weston A Pierce. and why is he running a vendetta agains soy. could it be his foundation is funded by the dairy board?

check out this story

http://zenhabits.net/soy/

Too much soy could be dangerous – just like too much of anything. But there has not been anything conclusive results stating that soy causes heath problems. Recently there was a small study that identified some adverse effects, again inconclusive, and the study was small and very new. but it might be a good idea to not eat tofu every day.

I'm totally convinced that soy milk and tofu is way better than its alternatives like cow's milk and grocery store chickens.

There isn't much proof that the soy isolates and soy concentrates are as good for you as whole natural soy. But no one is saying they are bad for you. They just having been around that long for us to know. The food companies frequently add concentrates and isolates to all kinds of food – to up their protein content. So if you do eat a lot of processed foods you might want to try avoiding these. But a better strategy is just don't eat a lot of processed foods. Vegan protein powders are usually made up of some kind of protein isolates. But if possible skip them and get your protein from whole plant foods.

Also there is this stuff called TVP – Textured Vegetable Protein. Its mostly soy. But it is extremely processed. The production of TVP looks more like a process to make plastic than a recipe. It hasn't been around long enough to be studied intensively. No one is saying it has adverse effects - but I don't think its a good idea to eat highly processed food. so it might be a good idea to err on the side of caution and not actually buy it or at least not very often.

People who track this kind of stuff note that soy sensitivity has been increasing over the years. Over the years more and more soy is GMO. The main reason farmers use GMO soy is that it is immune to the herbicide Round -up. The farmers spray round up on GMO soy pretty freely. Could this be why soy sensitivity is on the increase? Anyway, i think its a good idea to buy organically grown non-GMO soy as much as possible. This shouldn't even be a problem - almost all the soy milks are organic and non GMO. And you don't even have to pay extra. Organic milk costs extra - it costs as much as soy milk.

Last piece of advice. A lot of soy states on the package its grown in the USA. Buy those first. It may not be much but I think American laws and inspections do a better job of protecting both consumers and workers. Also in other countries they frequently cut down forests to plant soy. Again this shouldn't be much of a problem. A lot of soy is grown here.

1. http://www.healthline.com/health/milk-almond-cow-s...

2. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice...

3. http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/what-to-eat/d...

4. http://freefromharm.org/health-nutrition/vegan-doc...

it gives you the runs

Everything is bad for you, haven't you heard?? I bet you can google just about anything and you will find a web site or article claiming its bad for you.

thats why I eat and drink what ever I want...

Soy milk is not bad for you.

It's not.....necessarily.

Unfermented soy contains estrogen like chemicals and actual research has shown that unfermented soy affects women's menstrual cycles, lower men's sperm count and may damage your thyroid gland. There are no PROVEN health benefits to eating/drinking a lot of soy. Traditional Chinese soy foods are made from fermented soy.....not the unfermented stuff you see on supermarket shelves here in the US......soy milk,soy burgers, tofu, soy ice cream, etc.

The Adventist Health Study (actual research) shows that women who eat two servings of soy a day are considerably less likely to ever give birth to a live child.

I've seen three documented cases where high consumption of soy milk caused men to grow man boobs and lose interest in sex. Below is a link to one case.....documented by his doctors and written up in a medical journal.

Doesn't mean it will happen to you, of course. But do you want to take the chance?

It makes men turn into women

Probably better than real milk which is poorly tolerated by a LOT of people.

no

It isn't. There are trace amounts of hormones very similar to estrogen and so some speculate that that isn't good for male reproductive health but I think that it is bogus. Asians have been using soy products for thousands of years and they don't exactly have fertility problems.

Otherwise soy is very good for you. It's one of the few vegetable sources of complete protein all on its own and it has a wide variety of excellent nutrients. It gets a lot of bad press to the point of outright vilification from people who want to protect the dairy food market. And the beef market doesn't like soy protein edging onto their turf either.

There's another advantage to soy. Getting protein from cows would be fine if there weren't so many of us humans on planet Earth, using up too many limited resources and producing too much pollution. Getting protein from soy or other legumes is much more efficient and better for the planet and every living thing on it.