Soy products very,very bad for you?

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rayne89

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This is an offshoot from another thread forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=1587938#post1587938

Since I didn’t want to hijack spacecadet’s post I thought I’s start a seperate thread on the supposed evils of soy milk 😃 .

A particular poster stated
Soy is really, really bad for you in highly processed forms such as soy milk and soy cheese and so on ad nauseum. Don’t buy them. Many people who have allergic reactions to pasteurized milk find that they can tolerate raw milk perfectly well. You might give it a try if you can find it in your area. With the soy milk, you might be doing your baby more harm than good. Here are some articles written by people who know more about this than I do:

westonaprice.org/soy/index.html

realmilk.com/

westonaprice.org/children/index.html
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All these links are connected to the same foundation -the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Doing some research online I found the Weston A. Price Foundation on the quackwatch list.

quackwatch.org/04Consumer…nonrecorg.html
 
By the way I’m not anti-cows milk. What I am for is well rounded research not claims that seem rather extreme with very little if any generally accepted research.

AnnaTherese if you think the government is so pro-soy you may want to check this article.
washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44863-2002Apr13?language=printer

I realize what your pushing for is unpasturized raw milk. While they may be definate benefits of consuming raw milk, most of the general population don’t have access to dairy farms, and there are very real and serious health risks.

I am a sceptic by nature and I don’t buy into new trends or fads with out serious documented research from know sources.

I also don’t feel it’s right to make broad claims like soymilk is very, very bad for you with accepted sources to back up those claims.
 
Rayne,

Thank you for doing the research :D.

I too get a bit tired of people telling me what I should and should not eat especially since I have food allergies and sensitivities of my own - I have enough foods I have to avoid without being told some of the foods I like such as tofu when done right is something my body tolerates.

I do agree that anything that has been highly processed whether it is grains or soy generally speaking has lost a lot of its nutrient value but that does not make it bad for you. I still like my all beef hotdogs and turkey bacon (both having nitrites in them). They are definitely not a significant portion of my diet or my families diet but we get on “kicks” and will eat them more frequently and then we will go for months without touching them :).

Brenda V.
 
rayne89 said:
This is an offshoot from another thread forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=1587938#post1587938

Since I didn’t want to hijack spacecadet’s post I thought I’s start a seperate thread on the supposed evils of soy milk 😃 .

A particular poster stated

All these links are connected to the same foundation -the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Doing some research online I found the Weston A. Price Foundation on the quackwatch list.

quackwatch.org/04Consumer…nonrecorg.html
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I have not heard of quackwatch. Why do you consider it reliable?
 
adrift said:
I have not heard of quackwatch. Why do you consider it reliable?
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Quackwatch is run by Dr. Stephen Barrett-here’s his bio.
Stephen Barrett, M.D., a retired psychiatrist who resides in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has achieved national renown as an author, editor, and consumer advocate. In addition to heading Quackwatch, he is vice-president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, a scientific advisor to the American Council on Science and Health, and a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). In 1984, he received an FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation Award for Public Service in fighting nutrition quackery. In 1986, he was awarded honorary membership in the American Dietetic Association. From 1987 through 1989, he taught health education at The Pennsylvania State University. He is listed in Marquis *Who’s Who in America *and received the 2001 Distinguished Service to Health Education Award from the American Association for Health Education.

An expert in medical communications, Dr. Barrett operates 22 Web sites; edits Consumer Health Digest (a weekly electronic newsletter); is medical editor of Prometheus Books; and is a peer-review panelist for several top medical journals. He has written more than 2,000 articles and delivered more than 300 talks at colleges, universities, medical schools, and professional meetings. His 50 books include The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America and seven editions of the college textbook Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions. One book he edited, Vitamins and Minerals: Help or Harm?, by Charles Marshall, Ph.D., won the American Medical Writers Association award for best book of 1983 for the general public and became a special publication of Consumer Reports Books. His other classics include Dubious Cancer Treatment, published by the Florida Division of the American Cancer Society; Health Schemes, Scams, and Frauds, published by Consumer Reports Books; The Vitamin Pushers: How the “Health Food” Industry Is Selling America a Bill of Goods, published by Prometheus Books; and *Reader’s Guide to “Alternative” Health Methods, *published by the American Medical Association. His media appearances include Dateline, the Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC Prime Time, Donahue, CNN, National Public Radio, and more than 200 radio and television talk show interviews.
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quackwatch.org/10Bio/bio.html
 
newswise.com/articles/view/518762/?sc=rsmn
Two of the nation’s most respected nutrition and health site review organizations have questioned WPF’s credibility. Quack Watch (quackwatch.org) describes Dr. Price’s research on “natives” as “poorly designed studies [that jump to] simplistic conclusions.” The Tufts Nutrition Navigator (navigator.tufts.edu) gave the Weston Price Web site an “unacceptable” rating (10 out of 25 points), and gave its accuracy a rating of 1 (out of 10). In its review of the WPF Web site, Tufts stated “they appear to select obscure studies, take study results out of context and use undocumented ‘facts’ from their own publications to forward their agenda.” Tufts goes on to note that the promotion of raw milk presents a food safety risk and that the practice of feeding whole cow’s milk to babies, as promoted by WPF, is discouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
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Apparently, soy/dairy consumption is a highly debated issue…here is what little I know…when I quit consuming all dairy, the allergic reactions I had for years experienced vanished…hayfever, cats, anything, I simply no longer had allergies…will this work for everyone, probably not…
btw, I was then consuming rice milk…
(I have since gone back to dairy & will probably go off of it again sometime in the next few months as I personally feel better overall w/o it & a few other things…)
then there is Dr Christiane Northrup, MD, who has written numerous books, one being The Wisdom of Menopause & she has been, check her website to see if she still is, a proponet of soy milk…
My nurse mid-wife told me that soy mimics estrogen in the body & for that reason can have good & bad effects…depending on the individual.

I don’t think tofu is under scrutiny at all, lots of folks consume tons of it w/great results & I love it for how it makes me feel when I am diligent enough to use it often…

& then there’s the lady at the local health food store who told me all of the studies done that point to soy’s benefits were conducted w/fermented soy products…such as miso…I have no idea about this & am not willing to research it.
 
I am not allergic to cow’s milk and am not lactose intolerant. I like soy milk because it has a good shelf life. I had been buying cow’s milk and throwing away half a gallon since I am single and living alone, unable to use it all up before it went sour. I switched to soy milk. It lasts longer, plus I buy the enriched type, which has all of the vitamins that the cow’s milk contains, plus it is certified organic (not all are, you need to read the label), and I don’t have to waste any (which is good from the standpoint of being a good Christian and not be gluttonous but also not wasting food). I like the taste too, and the soy milk contains flavanoids which are not found in the cow’s milk. I also happen to like tofu. I’m not a vegetarian but probably could easily become one. I already do not eat pork and very rarely do I eat red meat.
 
I noticed someone on the other thread saying that soy is overly processed, well to make soy usable as a food source, it has to be processed. And someone also said that Asians don’t use soy milk, etc, but according to this site:
eatingchina.com/articles/soystory.html

that’s untrue. Also the use of fermented soy (that’s a process, right? lol) is great among most Asian nations. Tofu is ‘processed’ as well. I guess I don’t like the word processed as necessarily negative. In this country processed means adding a bunch of stuff not needed, in the case of soy processed means to make it edible (able to be digested and get nutrition from it).

Of course too much of a good thing can be bad since soy has the ability to mimic estrogen. This can cause problems in both men and women. It can also be helpful to both men and women.

To call soy “evil” is just plain silly, to call it processed (like a twinkie) is even sillier. Like most food, moderation is the key…
Jennifer
 
Asian people have very long lifespans. In China it is over 70 and they have no where near the level of medical care that we have available here. In Japan the lifespan is greater than here in the Unitied States. The Asian people enjoy a higher level of health than Americans. Their diets are centered around soy products, which are processed in many different ways.
 
i don’t think soy or dairy are bad for everyone; some people have good experiences when going off one or the other…i wish i didn’t have to give up either when nursing young babies but i just do…oh well

(thanks for starting the new thread)👍
 
There is nothing wrong with fermented soy. Tofu, miso and soy sauce and a few other forms are all acceptable forms of soy. The problem is the highly processed forms. Fermentation is not high processing. It is something I do in my kitchen all the time when I make yogurt or sauerkraut. You put the whey or whatever you are using in there (or in the case of dairy, the whey is already there), and you let it sit for hours and hours until it ferments. That is very different from what is done to make soybeans into soy milk.

I wonder, rayne, have you read Dr. Price’s work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration for yourself? Have you seen the photographs and the x-rays? Because, like I say to non-Catholics who want to know what the Catholic Church teaches, you have to go to the source to truly understand what is being presented here. You cannot expect to get accurate information about the Catholic Church from a Protestant pastor. You have to open up the Catechism and find out for yourself.

You haven’t yet responded to what I said about the criteria for posting things on the “quack” list. I do not see any real logical reasoning in the primary criteria: That anything out of the mainstream is considered suspicious. To me, that is usually the sign that something is more likely to be true because I have over the past thirty years lost a great deal of trust in our government and in associations such as the AMA and many, many others. If something conflicts with what the AMA says, for example, I’m more likely to take it seriously b/c I’ve heard it too often from doctors that they don’t know what causes this or that and here take this drug, it will make it all better, only to have patients who end up worse off than they were. I asked my doctor what to do about my eczema and he said, “Live with it. There’s nothing that can be done. I have it too.” Then I learned something about coconut oil from an alternative source and began putting it on my eczema and guess what, it is disappearing. I asked the same doctor what to do about this stye in my eye. He said if it doesn’t go away in two weeks he would cut it out. It didn’t go away in two weeks but it did go away. When I was coming close to the end of my pregnancy, the back-up doctor for the birth center I was going to said we should induce the baby, not that anything was wrong, I was just slightly overdue according to my charts, which were later realized to be mistakenly analyzed. I had the wrong due date, and even though I told her that and showed her my NFP chart proving that it was so, she still wanted to induce. I refused, and let the baby come on its own time, and guess what, the baby was fine. I have seen friends and acquaintances and family members wither away because of a doctor’s advice, even though healthy alternatives were readily available. So you can see why I do not trust the “conventional wisdom” of most doctors. Come to think of it, most doctors nowadays are anything but conventional. All they have to offer is drugs and surgery. These are very modern, high tech methods, and sometimes they are necessary. But for centuries people survived quite well on homemade broths, good fats, herbs and other concoctions prepared by the local community or the mysterious widow next door who was known to “cure ailments” or what have you. I trust God and his creation more than I trust men who work in factories and the people who give them money. That’s just good logic (and faith, too) to me.
 
Now perhaps the soy milks you buy at the store are overprocessed but I thought I would see exactly how soy milk is made from scratch so to speak and this is what I came up with:
ellenskitchen.com/faqs/tofumilk.html

Yes, the title is “tofumilk” but Tofu is made from soy beans. I was curious because of food allergies/sensitivities I use soy flour for some things that I purchase at the grocery store and there is always a recipe for “soy-milk” on the packaging. This brought me to the question of how soy-milk is overprocessed.

BTW, there are people who shouldn’t consume soy - in any form. I know of at least one little girl who is allergic to soy. I know of someone else who has Hashimto Thyroid Disease and soy products (tofu, soy-sauce, soy-milk etc.) affects her thyroid.

So, like someone else said, everything in moderation but I would like to add that if you are sensitive to something or allergic to it then avoidance is the best route to go (I should know - my life is much improved when I never eat tomatoes, pork or wheat!)

Brenda V.
 
BTDT with soy milk… basically, “processed” means being put through a process which *removes *nutrients, like high heat or intense pressure, unlike other ways of dealing with foods like old-fashioned fermenting using whey which actually *release *nutrients.

We tried and tried to make home-made soy milk with a machine and could not get it to taste good at all. Ever. And we had to put the machine outside because it smelled awful while it was working.

Some soy products are naturally fermented (miso, some soy sauces [check label], and some others), and some are “processed” as per above. Some people react badly to having that much estrogen-like stuff and others do not. Soy is a *huge *business in the US, and the situation is therefore about as fuzzy as anything else nutritional.
 
I’ve made tofu before, back in my hardcore healthfood days. First you make the soymilk, which is easy to make. I used to also make the soymilk and sweeten it by itsself. That was after a visit to “The Farm” in Tennessee. It was a commune started by hippy leader Steve Gaskin back in the late 60’s and they were total vegetarians. They were really into soy products and I think my recipe came from a book of theirs.

To make soymilk, first you soak the beans overnight. Then you blend them up with water into a puree and then cook the whole thing a certain amount of time, stirring constantly. Then you strain it in cheesecloth and, voila, you have soymilk. You sweeten it if you want to drink it. It’s delicious fresh.

To make tofu, you then add nigari, which it a seaweed product that curdles the soymilk. I forgot how long it takes, but then you pour the whole thing into an oak tofu press that has these holes in it, and the “whey”( I don’t remember the name of it) oozes out. It’s delicious fresh, but the whole thing is labor intensive to do at home.
 
I second the recommendation of raw milk.

My chronic stomach aches are gone. My son’s chronic hives are gone. Another son’s summer allergies are gone. My daughter’s clogged nose is gone. Their complexions have improved and my daughter’s periods are textbook normal. (I didn’t believe that really existed.)

While considering the Weston Price Foundation and it’s supposed quackery, you might consider that one advisor, Dr. Mary Enig, has been fighting trans fats for decades and only recently has modern science agreed that it’s very, very bad. So is it like being “saved”? Once a quack, always a quack. Or was she never really a quack, we just thought she was? Or did the blind hog find an acorn, to quote Scott Hahn?

A friend’s daughter has a new disease, EE, that’s only been diagnosed for about 7 years. It’s a food allergy that causes death of the digestive tract and the noticable symptom is food sticking in the throat. She follows the Weston Price recommendation on eating and she is the only patient of two doctors that doesn’t have a feeding tube at this length of time with the disease. Instead she is healthy and growing.

I don’t know who or how this quackwatch chose to dis Weston Price, but I do find it curious that a psychiatrist is judging outside his field and calling other people quacks.
 
AnnaTherese said:
I wonder, rayne, have you read Dr. Price’s work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration for yourself? Have you seen the photographs and the x-rays? Because, like I say to non-Catholics who want to know what the Catholic Church teaches, you have to go to the source to truly understand what is being presented here. You cannot expect to get accurate information about the Catholic Church from a Protestant pastor. You have to open up the Catechism and find out for yourself.

You haven’t yet responded to what I said about the criteria for posting things on the “quack” list. I do not see any real logical reasoning in the primary criteria: That anything out of the mainstream is considered suspicious.
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I agree with the criteria. Anna, I’m not a doctor or a scientist. I am not qualified to interpret scientific studies. If you want accurate Biblical interpretation you turn to the Church who has the authority to do so. Or you could try to interpret scripture on your own and possibly come up wrong.

What I read on Price beside’s his great interest in nutrition is that he was a dentist who performed hundreds of thousands of unnecessary root canals because of a a theory he believed that was later proven wrong.

I have grown up around hospitals. I have had several surgeries including open heart twice. And my sister had cancer twice and died at 21. Some people can afford to experiment with unconventional ideas, I am not one of them. I do not have blind trust in the medical community, I’ve seen more then my share to wary. But I also only rely on well documented, proven, accepted research. That is what I am comfortble with.

A friend of mine’s sister has been going to a doctor for over ten years and was being treated by him with supplements he sold as his office. She was very into holistic medicine. Many times over the years her sisters implored her to go to a different doctor because she really wasn’t getting better. Recently they finally convinced her to get a second opinion. It turns out she has diabetes and probably has had it for 10 years. According to her previous doctors own medical charts the new doctor says diabetes was so blantantly obvious he doesn’t understand how it wasn’t diagnosed sooner. She has severe organ damage and was diagnosed with approximately six months to live.

I do find anything our of the mainstream suspicious when it comes to medical treatments and things that can seriously effect health. Years back I read extensively on health and nutrition (before having a child when I had time to read.🙂 ) So I would say I am moderately knowledgable but I still would not rely on myself to evalute research studies.

When I was at college we learned what makes a good study and what makes a bad one and how a researcher can seriously bias the data. I didn’t set out to prove Price was wrong when I searched the internet. I was looking for well respected and accepted sources to corroborate his studies. I didn’t find them.

You absolutely free to follow Price’s theories. I just feel when a particularly strong statement is made there needs to be strong evidence to back it up so as not to mislead people. That was my whole point of this thread. All three links you gave tie to same organization, one that is not well accepted by the general medical community. For my ownself I can not accept the studies of one man who died almost 60 years ago over modern medical and scientific research.
 
Vanessa said:
I don’t know who or how this quackwatch chose to dis Weston Price, but I do find it curious that a psychiatrist is judging outside his field and calling other people quacks.
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Weston A. Price was a dentist born in 1870. Stephen Barrett is a physciatrist which is a medical doctor whom specializes in psychiatry. He does have a lengthy bio which I posted on this thread. Stephen Barret does have his critics, the majority of which that are from the alternative medicine community.
 
I read an article that my mom’s best friend sent to me after I found out I was pregnant. She has two daughters and had always been very careful about what they ate (esp. in terms of organic foods, esp. milk and meat products b/c of the extra hormones in non-organic milk and meat). She was really big on this b/c she had done a bunch of research into early puberty, esp. in young girls. She sent me an article from…gosh I can’t remember the magazine now, it’s hanging in my kitchen (i am at my parent’s house watching my grandmother) but anyways the article basically discusses how early puberty is becoming a large problem. Girls are getting their periods younger and younger, developing breasts very young, etc. I think it said something like girls today get their periods around 11 or so, whereas my mom’s generation (she’s 50) got theirs around 15/16.
Anyways, someone above mentioned that soy mimics estrogen, and this article also mentioned that about soy…it cited some studies done in Puerto Rico where baby girls who were being fed w/ soy formula were beginning puberty as early as age 4 (in the extreme) and more averagely at age 6 or 7…
I haven’t done any extra research in this avenue (I’m still muddling through birthing books and breastfeeding and all that…haha one thing at a time right?) and it was only one article I read but I found it VERY fascinating, esp. with regards to the mention of soy.
 
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