During my new year's road trip, I spent time with some thoughtful and very well trained practitioners of bodywork and alternative medicine. In discussions of how to take better care of ourselves, a couple of them said—emphatically—that soy is not beneficial to health, contains minimal protein, and has been known to increase the risk of breast cancer.
Since soy is a central part of my diet and (so I thought) one of my main protein sources, that freaked me out. I've been eating cereal with soy milk for breakfast every weekday for years, and I have tofu as a main dish at least a few times a week.
For most of January, I tried to avoid soy: I switched to rice milk in the morning, cut back on tofu, and even bought some dried TVP at Safeway (weirdly, Whole Foods doesn't have it). But I don't know how to cook the TVP and—for real, pinky swear—I love the taste and texture of tofu.
So although I take my friends' opinions seriously, I decided to do some research of my own before making any permanent diet changes. Here's what I learned.
Soy contains phytoestrogens, a type of chemical that can act like estrogen. Higher exposure to estrogen over a woman's lifetime has been strongly linked with increased breast cancer risk. However, "it is currently unclear whether phytoestrogens from soy foods affect breast cancer risk."
A handful of widely publicized studies have been done on the impact of soy on women's health, but nearly all were conducted in Asian countries where women consume diets that are much higher in soy than standard American diets, and all were conducted on small (200 subjects or fewer) groups of women, many of whom were postmenopausal. The results did not indicate that their lifetime soy intake had significantly affected their health.
Studies have also been done on breast cancer patients to see if soy actually has a beneficial impact on their illness. Other studies indicate that consuming soy during puberty may decrease a girl's risk of developing breast cancer later in life. But again, the results were mixed, inconclusive, and controversial.
All of the dozen or so scientific articles I read suggested that since we know very little about the long-term effects of soy on women's bodies, the best idea is to consume soy in moderation and not to worry about it—unless you're a postmenopausal woman who already has cancer, in which case you may want to limit your intake, just in case. When combined with healthy eating (fruits and vegetables, very little sugar, the usual stuff) and regular exercise, soy consumption has not been proven to increase the risk of breast cancer and may even help lower it.
As for the level of protein in soy, the FDA recommends 25 grams of soy protein per day as beneficial for heart health, and the agency reports that replacing animal protein with soy protein lowers fat intake while supplying your body with many of the same nutrients as lean meat. A four-ounce serving of firm tofu contains 13 grams of soy protein.
Whew. Now let's fry up some tofu. I'll bring the TVP if you can figure out what to do with it.
She's never met a country she didn't like.
All images and text in this blog are © 2005–2018 Mia Lipman Irwin, unless otherwise indicated.
4 comments:
I actually find that mild to moderate soy intake helps level out my otherwise belligerent hormones at certain times of month (also true of folic acid). This is wholly unscientific information based on how I feel, but I do truly feel it. I have heard the soy controversy before, (including claims that it does bad things to testosterone levels in men) but I think any merit that argument has is for people who have replaced _all_ of their proteins with soy. Probably if I replaced all of my proteins with cashew nuts, at some point something in the nut would give me a hard time. Humans should eat a varied diet, everything in moderation, and there you have it.
This is, again, my unscientific opinion based on internet reading and my own subjective experience. Also, I don't know what TVP is made of. I didn't look at the link. That's full disclosure for ya.
Shazow!
When hippies start turning against soy, you know the world is being turned upside down.
Next thing you know, they'll be boycotting hemp and encouraging all of us to wear clothes all the time. I hope President Obama has an in with the hippie lobby.
Lizzarino, here are the ingredients in TVP: "Soybeans or vegetable protein. In the case of soybeans, these are cracked, dehulled, flaked, cleaned, dried, and defatted, and finally extruded into almost any size." And here's what it looks like: gerbil food.
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