Soya = poison?

[Kiran]

Hello all,


I am trying to change my lifestyle to almost-vegan, which means that I have started to eat more fruit, vegetables and whole grains, but also that I include more and more soya products in my diet.

I've never doubted that soya is a great alternative to milk, as I buy only soya products that certify no genetic alteration.

But, today someone told me that soya products are bad for your body, because they, in his words "can't be digested properly, contain carcinogenics, and overmore make your thyroid grow and slow down. In the eyes of a doctor, soya is poison".

Is this true?

All answers will be much appreciated. Thank you!

There are two things that truly frighten me about those who move more into a vegan/veggi approach... That's this higher reliance on both soy and grains.. Soy is turning out to be rather nightmarish. And grains have so many built-in toxic components... to move directly into this exposure stream is turning out to be notably unwise..

My feelings over this issue have been torn back and forth over the years because for the longest time I ~wanted~ to be more vegetarian in my eating habits... but the deeper one researches the more disquieting this gets.. there are so many ways it can go wrong with the ways it's being sold to us today....

To get you started on a good info steam exposure to what's being learned about soy, here's a good place to start:

The Evidence Against Soy
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/10/07/the-evidence-against-soy.aspx

With a bunch more to read at this url on the same site:
http://soy.mercola.com/

And here's a good place to start on grains:

The Awful Truth About Eating Grains
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/01/02/truth-about-eating-grains.aspx

My wife and I have been grain-free for going on three years now... don't miss it a bit... have never been healthier at the spry age of 58... :^)

Tread very carefully around soy... it's been sold to us as both healthful and harmless... neither which seems to be the case!

[Albalida]

I read in Mark Kurlansky's Salt that soy-- because there was a chapter on salty soy sauce-- is so nutritious that a person can live off soy, salt, and water. It was portrayed as a multivitamin that fills your stomach too.

By my own experience, I noticed that too much soy actually gives me brain fog. I can't think as clearly. It must have been either missing something or putting something else in my body that wasn't supposed to be there. So, I laid off it. Too much dairy has the same effect.


Perhaps another, although probably pricier, alternative to milk would be almond milk? Or rice milk? Or coconut milk?

I still have soy on occasion, I just don't depend on it as the foundation of my dietary pyramid.

[Podshell]

When I was involved with the Krsnas they had grain free days roughly every month, usually chickpea flour was used as an alternative, I think too much of one thing in the diet can cause problems, I use many types of grains and chickpeas now instead of wheat , I find you can make half decent meat alternatives from Oats/barley/rye flakes etc as a base.

[knightofalbion]

Fermented soya foods like tofu, tempeh, miso etc. are excellent foods and very healthy. No problems there.

Processed soya is just that processed. A processed food. I wouldn't advise livng off it, but in moderation...

As for soya milk. I've been drinking it for about 30 years and it hasn't done me any harm. There isn't actually a great deal of soya in soya milk, its heavily watered down.
Nowadays you can get a good choice of plant milks. Soya - almond- rice - oat - hazelnut - coconut. They all taste nice. Coconut milk is the most nutritious and has certain medicinal properties, it is high fat though so go easy with it.

Going back to soya. Bear in mind that a lot of these scare stories about soya aren't true and were put about by the dairy industry to protect their markets.
As Jane Plant famously pointed out, if soya is so bad as the dairy industry tries to claim why are they feeding it to their cows in such huge quantities?

Here's a very interesting article on the subject of Gluten that I just ran across recently that's truly quite fascinating. I've since been finding this being referenced in a number of articles on the subject.. (I've lately been studying what's newly being learned about the thyroid). Worth looking into!

The gluten-thyroid connection
<...>
What explains the connection? It’s a case of mistaken identity. The molecular structure of gliadin, the protein portion of gluten, closely resembles that of the thyroid gland. When gliadin breaches the protective barrier of the gut, and enters the bloodstream, the immune system tags it for destruction. These antibodies to gliadin also cause the body to attack thyroid tissue. This means if you have AITD and you eat foods containing gluten, your immune system will attack your thyroid.

Much more at: http://chriskresser.com/the-gluten-thyroid-connection

Firstly... Mercola is not "dairy"... the core stream of info on the subject is not industry related...

Originally Posted by knightofalbion

As Jane Plant famously pointed out, if soya is so bad as the dairy industry tries to claim why are they feeding it to their cows in such huge quantities?

because it's cheep... the commercial dairy could care less about the overall health of their animals... it's all about cheep milk production... as clearly you're already aware of... :^)

Not to mention that you know that it's mostly all genetically modified any more!

By the year 2000, over 50% of all soybeans planted in the U.S. were genetically engineered. As of 2007, that number increased to 91%. Soybeans currently surpass both corn and cotton as the genetically engineered crop with the greatest planted acreage.
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=290


And here's something else to consider:
DOSING KIDS WITH DANGEROUS PESTICIDES
http://www.notmilk.com/forum/868.html
If soy crops are sprayed with one of the most toxic substances used in agriculture, malathion, EPA will allow no more than 8 parts per million on those soybeans. Soybeans are harvested, roasted and served to dairy cows and beef cattle. If soy forage is used for animal feed, the permitted level of malathion is nearly seventeen times greater (135 parts per million). Humans may eat a few ounces per day of malathion-treated soy products. Dairy cows might eat ten pounds per day or more of that same product with higher permissible residues. Day after day. Week after week. Thousands of doses. The actual human dose of malathion for milk drinkers or meat eaters may very well be thousands of times greater than the maximum standard for human tolerance as set by EPA
more at: http://www.notmilk.com/forum/868.html

[Baile]

Hi Kiran, hope your weight loss journey is going well. My rule: If I start to have doubts, either due to what I've experienced or what I've read, I stop. I stopped using soy sauce because it was too salty and made me crave it. I don't want to crave anything. And I stopped eating and drinking soy products because of articles I've read.

There are so many other alternatives we can choose, so I simply choose something else, something that feels 100% right for me. That's how I deal with these questions.

[Podshell]

About three months back I was reading an article about Joan Crawford in which a substance called 'Seitan' was mentioned , I googled it and it is gluten, it is used as a meat substitute, I had never heard of this name before and had been veggie for about twenty years.

[knightofalbion]

Originally Posted by StephenK

Firstly... Mercola is not "dairy"... the core stream of info on the subject is not industry related...

All this soya bashing was originally started off by the dairy industry to protect their market i.e. to try to put people off using soya milk instead of cow's milk.
I wasn't commenting on the Mercola article.