Some soy foods to avoid....

Today's post: Monday, 10-6-2008

Some people have listed soy foods as superfoods or as beneficial to your health. They are a vegetarian source of protein and also have appealed to people wanting a protein food other than grain fed red meat even if they are not vegetarians.

However, they may be a mixed review food at best and may even be bad for you at worst.

That information is still not well known by some people who are well informed and give great advice on other good for you foods. (The otherwise excellent book “ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine: A Food Lover's Road Map to Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Getting Really Healthy” is in that group, which I discovered after I posted on back on 9-16 that it sounded promising and bought a copy for my wife and me.)

There is some evidence that soy foods lower testosterone and the sex drive of both men and women who eat them in large amounts. And, soy also apparently lowers male fertility a study recently reported. The authors explained that in cultures that eat soy foods, a reason that the fertility rate is not very low is that people in those cultures eat some soy but not only soy and thus eat less than many people have believed. (There is another reason listed later in this post.)

One preventive medicine doctor I know, Dr Mike Nichols, even found evidence in the scientific literature, NOT the medical literature, that eating a lot of soy increased lp(a) in the bloodstream of the people who ate that much. Since high levels of lp(a) tend to help cause plaque build up in your arteries, that’s NOT good. He also pointed out to me that eating soy lowers bioavailable testosterone. He said eating it a few times a month was likely safe but that he himself ate none.

However, Dr Mark Harmon said he found that the problem was in part NOT just because soy was bad for you or that it had no health benefits. He found some evidence that traditional forms of soy foods that are fermented avoid many of the problems reported with soy foods. And, he said that some problems with soy foods were also avoided in a different way with tofu, which is also a traditional soy food.

He was very definite however, that the other forms of soy that are NOT traditional foods such as the soy protein in soy flour, in meatless meats and in health bars, soy milk, and those nontraditional soy foods were likely NOT good for you.

So, when today’s Early to Rise health article was on this subject & was well done, I decided to post it today and comment on it.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

“Soy Foods: Friend or Foe?

By Kelley Herring

You might think there's very little difference between tempeh and tofu. But when it comes to your health, this couldn't be further from the truth.

Why? Unfermented soy foods - like edamame, soy nuts, soy sprouts, soy flour, soy protein isolate, soy milk, and tofu - contain two anti-nutrients: trypsin inhibitors and phytic acid.

Trypsin inhibitors reduce the body's natural ability to digest proteins, and, therefore, assimilate the amino acids in them. Phytic acid reduces the absorption of minerals like magnesium and zinc, essential components of enzymes that participate in hundreds of biochemical processes.

Fermented soy foods, on the other hand - including miso, tempeh, soy sauces, and fermented soy milk and tofu - actually stop the effects of phytic acid. Plus, they create probiotics - "good" bacteria that benefit gut health and increase the assimilation of nutrients in the body.

Studies have shown that it's these traditionally fermented soy foods that should be credited with the reduced rates of cancer and heart disease seen in Asian populations. Not the soy burgers, soy shakes, and other processed soy foods that have been popularized in the last decade.”

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So, the bottom line is that nuts and some whole grains and eggs and whey and such foods as beef fed only grass, pasture raised poultry, wild caught fish and seafood that’s not high in mercury and is sustainably harvested, and nonfat and very lowfat dairy are the best protein foods for your health.

And, full fat cheese and fermented soy foods are best eaten as occasional foods rather than every day or every week foods. (The full fat cheese, particularly from grain fed cows, is too high in omega 6 oils and saturated fat to eat often.)

It does NOT look wise, this information suggests, to eat unfermented soy foods or foods made from them.

And, this specifically includes soy feeding formula for babies. (My wife and I fed our daughter a soy formula plus iron to help ensure she didn’t become allergic to cow’s milk which has since been found unnecessary to prevent that allergy. Unfortunately, she DID become allergic to all soy foods, peas, and peanuts. So far she has survived the experience. But I am not at all sure it’s safe to feed babies soy feeding formula after going through that experience. It has been both scary and obnoxious for her and for my wife and me.)

So, stick to light or occasional or light moderate intake of traditional soy foods and you should be OK if you aren’t allergic to soy. But avoid the nontraditional kinds of soy as they are not that good for you.