The Soy Conundrum: Part 1

This is a HUGE topic that would take volumes to adequately explore, but I’ll try to give you the highlights. If you’ve been following health trends, you are likely as confused as most Americans about soy. Is it healthy for human consumption? My answer is a tentative maybe. Here’s why...

How Soy is Grown: About 85% of all soy grown is now genetically modified. Even if you don’t care about the genetic material itself, what this tinkering has done has allowed these crops to be even more heavily sprayed with pesticides and herbicides which travel up the food chain. We are seeing more and more research coming in now about how these residues contribute to disease, especially in children.

Health Claims: Most of the health claims are marginal at best. When you actually read through the literature and the research, you’ll find there are small benefits to LDL reduction associated with eating soy (although it’s hard to determine if that is the reason or if it’s because participants traded conventional meats for soy a few meals a week and maybe it was really just the removal of the damaged fats and fat soluble toxins that did the trick). Most of the positive health benefits are found from using fermented soy foods, not from products like “Tofurky” or SPI (soy protein isolate).

Protein Quality: You will hear many proponents of vegetarian and vegan diets claim that soy offers a complete protein source. While it is true on a chemical level that soy offers a broad spectrum of essential amino acids, it also important to understand that soy contains chemicals that slow or prevent the digestion of proteins and significantly impair the bioavailability of their component amino acids.

Human systems simply don’t produce the all the enzymes essential to the complete digestion of soy protein or the breakdown of the “anti-nutrients” that get in the way. When we rely strictly on soy for protein, or have a very high intake of soy products in the diet, we risk long term amino acid and mineral deficiencies that create problems in all our systems including hypothyroidism, anemia and immuno-deficiency.

Anti-nutrients: These are substances that either impair nutrient bioavailability or are chemicals that directly impinge on human systems creating health problems in the long term. One of these problematic substances is phytic acid or phytate. Soy has one of the highest amounts of phytate of any legume or grain studied, and to make matters worse, the phytates in soy are highly resistant to breaking down by heat (unlike phytates found in spinach, for example). Phytic acid blocks the absorption of vital minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, copper and zinc. Because we don’t have the capacity to break down phytates, we have to rely on other mechanisms to do it for us. Happily, bacteria can do this via fermentation. This is why fermented soy products are considered by most nutrition experts to be the best form for human consumption. Fermented soy products include tamari (soy sauce), miso and tempeh.

Unfermented soy also contains enzyme inhibitors that block one of your body’s main proteases: trypsin. This is essential in the digestion and breakdown of proteins. Diets high in trypsin inhibitors can precipitate pancreatitis (and other pathological conditions of the pancreas), amino acid deficiencies and gastric distress as the undigested proteins make their way through the intestines.

If you choose to use soy, please choose organic, non-GMO, fermented products, and rotate your protein sources so you don’t rely exclusively, or even heavily, on soy. It is essential that growing children NOT use soy exclusively as their bodies try to build bones and brains. There are plenty of other legumes out there and when combined with a grain you will have a complete amino acid profile, and a broader spectrum of nutrients.

Get Informed. Get Help if you need it. And Get REAL.

(also published on the Patch.com)