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An LDS doctor who specializes in nutrition, tells why he believes soy is problematic.
Recently on my website, www.stangardnermd.com, I posted a comment about my concerns with soy products. I was inundated with requests for clarification by many folks who have been drinking soy milk, enjoying edamame, and venturing into tofu and other forms of soy products.
The question in the title of this article really should be: “Why no unfermented soy?” Fermenting the soy alleviates my concerns, and actually provides you with a healthy food; that is, as long as the soy is not genetically modified (which constitutes a high percentage of soy crops grown in the United States). Fermented soy removes the harmful ingredients, which is why miso and tempeh are healthy.
Concerns with Unfermented Soy
Breaking it down to the scientific level, then, here are some ingredients of soy, along with their effect(s) on the body:
- Phytates bind minerals, thus interfering with their absorption through the intestinal wall. These minerals include iron, calcium magnesium, and zinc.
- Enzyme inhibitors interfere with digestion, as is what happens with trypsin inhibitors. These enzymes are inactivated with fermentation.
- Phytoestrogens,
- Genistein,
- Diadzen and
- Isoflavones, which are endocrine disruptors, interfere with thyroid function (interestingly, many people in the U.S. today suffer with a poorly functioning thyroid, a malady that was previously rare).
- Hemagglutinin, which increases red blood cell clumping, contributing to clotting and less efficient oxygen delivery to the cells.
- Soy is processed with aluminum, which is found in the resulting soy products, and
- Soy formula has 80 times greater amount of the mineral manganese than is present in breast milk.
- Possibly because soy is present in so many processed foods, many people are allergic to it. In my days as a conventional pediatrician, I found that about ½ of the babies that were allergic to cows’ milk were also allergic to soy milk.
Additional Studies’ Indications
The above concerns ignore thousands of studies linking the intake of soy products to
- digestive disorders,
- immune problems,
- cognitive changes (for the worse),
- cancer and
- heart disease.
If all of the above does not cause enough concern to eliminate soy from your diet, almost 90% of the soy in America is genetically modified, which is another food experiment on the American public.
The marketing in favor of soy in this multi-billion dollar market is huge, and has successfully been able to change attitudes toward this product so that people are happily buying more and more soy.
With the information I have shared with you, I am obviously against the intake of unfermented soy.
Tofu or Not Tofu: That is the Question
What about tofu? Some good, some not so good: Tofu is coagulated soy. It retains the phytates, but it is safer than unfermented soy. One reader asked about Ezekiel bread and soy sauce. This Is my answer: “Ezekiel bread utilizes sprouted soy, rather than the bean itself. The anti-trypsin and other harmful effects of the bean are not present in the sprouted state. The soy sauce is made from fermented soy, which is fine.”
The Final Question
The dilemma of soy’s beneficial or detrimental elements, combined with all of the allergies and additives in popular (and prevalent) cows’ milk, leads all of us (including me) to wonder what is safe to drink. Of course, the best answer is water, but that doesn’t go very well on your cereal, and it’s kind of tough to enjoy a cookie as much if you can’t dunk it in a glass of cold milk (assuming, of course, that you are eating a healthy cookie—and a rare one, at that!).
Tradition and taste may dictate cows’ milk, but if you are allergic to it, you have several choices. I have to confess, that until I did the research, I too assumed that soy milk was the best choice, and I drank it on my breakfast cereals or made smoothies with it. But having learned what I now know, I do not recommend nor use soy.
So, if I choose not to drink pasteurized, homogenized milk and can’t get raw milk, what do I drink instead of soy milk? Almond milk and goats milk are a few other choices. Goats’ milk is the closest nutrient to breast milk there is. You’ll probably want to experiment and see what works (and tastes) best to you. I’d love to learn what those of you who have explored other options have discovered. Feel free to drop me a line at www.stangardnermd.com.
To your dynamic health and energy!
Dr. Stan
