Vegetarians: Be careful with unfermented soy products!

Like most of the vegetarians you probably choose soy products as one of your main source of protein, unaware that their consumption can actually harm you. For years we where told that soy beans are the miracle food of the millennium and the answer to cure heart disease, cancer, obesity, osteoporosis, hot flashes and  world hunger. We truly believed, that soymilk is the answer to lactose sensitive humans (I am one of them). 

Before I am going to tell you about the not so well known, but well documented unhealthy effects of unfermented soy products, let us have a quick look on how they became so popular.

 First, the soy industry started to plant soy beans to extract the oil from it and soy oil became a very large industry. The production of soy oil created a lot of soy protein residue as a left over by-product, and since they could feed only small amounts of it to animals, the industry had to find another big market and ventured into the field of “human consumption”. This is how isolated soy protein came to play a mayor role in the manufacturing of products that mimic meat and dairy products.

 Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, two scientific researchers who’s extensive article can be found at http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/tragedy.html , state “Advances in technology make it possible to produce isolated soy protein (the key ingredient that imitates meat and dairy) from what was once considered a waste product—the defatted, high protein soy chips—and then transform something that looks and smells terrible into products that can be consumed by human beings.  Flavorings, preservatives, sweeteners, emulsifiers and synthetic nutrients have turned soy protein isolate, the food processors’ ugly ducking, into a New Age Cinderella.”

 You get the idea, I guess. They just found a way to turn a large amount of undesired byproduct into profit!

 To the laymen soybeans are soybeans and soy products are soy products, but this is far from the truth.

There are only two kinds of soy beans: organic and genetically modified (it’s also called GM, that’s the short form you find on the labels). You should avoid the genetically modified soy at any costs and for several reasons. Here an excerpt of epidemiologist and biochemist Judy Carman’s letter to the editor of Farm Weekly August 5, 2004

 “…Not all ingested DNA and proteins are completely broken down in the gut. If proteins were fully digested, we would not have allergies (e.g. to peanuts) or mad cow disease.

There is also evidence that some DNA can survive digestion in the gut and be incorporated into white blood cells, spleen, liver, muscle, milk, kidneys and cells of the immune system.

Studies have shown that large molecules, including food proteins and allergens, eaten by the mother, can enter the developing fetus and breast milk.

There is a specific concern about proteins and DNA in genetically modified foods because of the way GM foods are made.

Methods, such as shooting the desired genes into the plant on tiny bullets, result in genes being placed randomly into the plant’s genetic code.

This may inadvertently turn some of the plant’s natural genes on, or off, produce new toxins, proteins or allergens or produce characteristics found in ancestral forms of the plant.”

I hope you’ll understand how powerful gene manipulation is and therefore a big thread to our health.

If you want to read more about this topic visit http://www.non-gm-farmers.com

A very shocking and eye opening movie regarding gene manipulated food I would like to recommend is called “The Future of Food”, http://www.thefutureoffood.com/  

Soy products are also classified into two main groups: fermented and unfermented. The unfermented soy category (including soy milks, soy protein powders, soy protein isolates, soy infant formula and all the soy meat and dairy alternatives) is the problematic one because of their phytic acid content. While all legumes and grains contain a certain amount of phytic acid, soy beans are the only ones which’s phytic acid can not be destroyed or even lessened through the two best known methods: soaking (and throwing away the water) and cooking!

The reason why phytic acids are not desired in our diet is that they inhibit the absorption of significant levels of minerals. That means, from the probably 100 milligrams of magnesium in 12 ounce tofu you can absorb only about 10 milligrams! (You can apply this to other minerals as well) And who knows if these phytic acids could affect the absorption of minerals from other food you consume at the same time too?

 The only effective way to reduce the phytic acid in soy beans is to ferment them, so miso, tamari and tempeh are ok.

 I personally think it all comes with balance. In the western world we’ve hyped up the soybean consumption so much, that in almost all processed food you find them in one form or the other and too many vegetarians rely on tofu as their main source of protein. No Asian would ever consume so much soy products! And they have no vegetarian tradition that thrives on soy proteins as well. My advice would be to cut down on processed soy foods like burgers or sausages and if you enjoy drinking a protein shake use hemp protein powder instead. It’s a much safer product that also contains the full range of amino acids and you can find already hemp bars and milk in organic shops.