Monday, December 13, 2010

Vent and my beef with soy

    Sometimes I feel like I just want to give up trying to eat "clean". It's a ton of work, can be pricey, and people treat you like a freak of nature for being "natural". I feel like most products are pure lies and it gets discouraging.
    Almost every change that's taken place around here has come with a LOT of research. Mostly because I never take what the media or government says at face value.
    Anyway, we've cut way back on our meat/chicken consumption. We don't eat it unless it's grass fed/organic but because of how pricey it is we decided to use more soy products (ie; organic soy milk and tofu). It took me a while to find much information on the topic and now that I have,I am sorry to say that even soy has it's hang-ups (and lots of them). based on the information I found, I've decided to rarely use soy products at all. 


Here's a list of why:
     * Hexane-a chemical that's a known neurotoxin is often used to process soy ingredients
     * Isoflavones (plant based estrogen that mocks human estrogen) found in soy have been linked
        to thyroid issues
     * Study by Journal of Clinical Nutrition gave women with breast tumors a soy drink for 14 days and 
        their tumors increased significantly
     * FDA refers to a study where consumption of soy linked to increased occurance of Alzheimer's
     * Infants given soy formula have estrogen levels 17,000 times higher than infants on other milks

    And that's only SOME of the risks of soy consumption(please read the entire article HERE for further information). Also note that Americans consume much more soy than we realize due to excessive food additives/processing.
The verdict is still out, but until we know for sure, I don't want my family to be part of the experiment. I wish eating safe food didn't have to be so hard.
Thanks for listening to my vent and remember to reduce your exposure!

Resources
Truth About Soy Claims
Boston Globe
Is Soy Healthy?

1 comment:

  1. To confirm that I've been told by my doctor to stay away from as much soy as I can due to my thyroid problem which is sad cause I used to eat a lot of it and drink soy milk I've switched to almond milk and actually like it better.

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