From: Mothering.com
Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food
By Kaayla T. Daniel
Issue 124: May/June 2004
Over the past decade, soy foods have become America’s favorite health food. Newspapers, magazines, and best-selling health writers have proclaimed the “joy of soy” and promoted the belief that soy food is the key to disease prevention and maximum longevity.
The possibility that an inexpensive plant food could prevent heart disease, fight cancer, fan away hot flashes, and build strong bodies in far more than 12 ways is seductive. The truth, unfortunately, is far more complex. Soy foods come in a variety of forms, including many heavily processed modern products. Even good forms of soy foods must be eaten sparingly-the way they have been eaten traditionally in Asia. Most important, many respected scientists have issued warnings stating that the possible benefits of eating soy should be weighed against the proven risks. Indeed, thousands of studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive distress, immune-system breakdown, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders and infertility-even cancer and heart disease.
Americans rarely hear anything negative about soy. Thanks to the shrewd public relations campaigns waged by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Protein Technologies International (PTI), the American Soybean Association, and other soy interests, as well as the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 1999 approval of the health claim that soy protein lowers cholesterol, soy maintains a “healthy” image.
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