Maybe you’ve heard scary things about soy. . .
Feminizing men, fueling breast cancer, wrecking your thyroid. Three claims, decades of research, and a solid conclusion.
If you live in a country where soy isn’t a staple food, you’ve probably heard a lot of scary things about it:
If you live somewhere that eats a lot of soy, you’re probably thinking: these myths are ridiculous. We’ve eaten soy for generations and I’ve never heard of anyone having these problems. You’re right, and you have nothing to worry about.
For everyone else, here’s the scientific consensus on soy foods, and the three myths that really need to die☠️.
What are soy foods?
Soybeans start out green and tender — you may have seen these served as edamame. As the beans mature they get smaller, and most varieties turn yellow. From there, they’re remarkably versatile.
Soy milk
Soybeans blended with water, then strained to remove the pulp.
Tofu
Made from soy milk: ingredients bring the proteins together, much like curds and whey in cheesemaking, and the proteins are pressed into blocks.
Soy curls & TVP
Made much like wheat noodles: soybeans are ground into flour, mixed with water into a dough, then formed into shape.
Tempeh
Similar to making cheese: a culture is added to the beans and grows around them.
Why is there so much fear around soy?
Soy contains phytoestrogens — plant estrogens. Phytoestrogens are different from mammal estrogens, the kind humans, cows, and goats produce. Much of the fear comes from that single fact, plus the misunderstanding that eating phytoestrogens must be like taking estrogen.
If people knew how many everyday foods contain phytoestrogens, soy might not seem so frightening:
The only people worried about eating too much garlic are vampires. Meanwhile, dairy products contain actual mammal estrogens and almost nobody worries about those.
Just because dairy products contain animal estrogens. You don't need to start worrying about them. Low-fat dairy, especially fermented dairy like yogurt and kefir, can be part of a Whole-Food Mediterranean-Style diet.
Look at the health outcomes, not the mechanism
Most soy fear-mongering zooms in on one chemical or biological process. It’s a common social media move: highlight a single process and make it sound terrifying. The problem is that thousands of processes are running in your body at once, and for every “bad” one there may be dozens counteracting it.