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Too much tofu can make you soy-ry
Tofu dish |
Millions of dollars were poured into research and technologists plopped soy into every food imaginable. They ground it into burgers, hot dogs and sausages. They processed it into cheese, milk and ice-cream.
Manufacturers added it to baby formula and baristas foamed it into lattes. Purists consumed soy in its customary Asian forms - as tofu, tempeh or edamame - while hard-core health nuts sought soy protein powder or isoflavone-packed supplements.
But 15 years later, with ever more soy products available and conspicuous soy consumption a cultural shorthand for, "Hey, I'm health-conscious!" the tides are turning against the wonder food, said a report in the L.A. Times.
Call it the "soy backlash."
A crop of books and articles now warns about the dangers, not benefits, of the bean.
It's being tracked by an international watchdog group, the Soy Online Service, whose mission is to "uncover the truth about soy" and inform consumers about "the plethora of criminal and dangerous lies that issue from the soy industry."
Soy, we are warned, can do terrible things should we overdose on tofu, suggests the men's magazine Best Life.
Even mainstream scientists are pulling back on once-heady health predictions for the bean.
New research is showing that soy is not the magic bullet researchers once hoped it might be.
Yet these scientists also see soy's fall from grace as the latest casualty in the endless - and unrealistic - search for a single substance that can change one's life.
"It's just food!" says soy guru Mark Messina, an adjunct professor of nutrition at Loma Linda University in California, who has written books on its health effects and consults for the soy industry. "We are talking about diet here, not the fountain of youth."
The vegetable in the hairy pod is a pretty complicated bean. Native to China and Japan, it is termed the "king of legumes" because it has the most complete protein of any member of the pea family. It is high in calcium, magnesium and vitamin B, and contains estrogen-like chemicals called isoflavones.
Soy has had its share of celebrity champions. Henry Ford was batty about the bean. He built a car of plastic made from soybeans, wore a soybean suit and soy fibre tie at various public functions, and served a 15-item soy menu at the 1934 World's Fair.
But in the 1990s, evidence of soy's possible benefits began to mount and books and magazines took the science and ran with it.
"Are soy isoflavones the women's health powerhouse?" asked a 1997 article in The Nutrition Reporter, adding that soybeans might end up "the ultimate women's health supplement of the 21st century".
The market for soy foods exploded. Perhaps no food could withstand the hype heaped on soy. But with more rigorous scientific examination, the bean's starry promise seems to be crumbling.
In January, the American Heart Association published an advisory that pulled back on its earlier stance on soy, which had recommended "including soy protein foods in a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol."
The new statement said that a review of 22 studies showed that soy protein with isoflavones did not, after all, seem to improve cholesterol. Thus, the association said, it "could not recommend the use of isoflavone supplements in pills or food for the prevention of heart disease".
Alice Lichtenstein, a nutrition scientist at Tufts University and the chair of the heart association's nutrition committee, says the scientific cart simply got ahead of the horse.
"Soy is good," she says. "Soy as a food is very good" - but only because it has healthier fats and vitamins than, say, meat.
"Soy is good," she says. "Soy as a food is very good" - but only because it has healthier fats and vitamins than, say, meat.
This April, there was more bad news for soy.
Many women consume soy in the hope of preventing breast cancer; a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found differently. After analyzing 18 studies, the authors concluded that eating soy may very slightly reduce the risk of breast cancer - but not enough to recommend soy foods or supplements.
The hot flush connection also has begun to erode. In early trials, soy isoflavones reduced hot flushes by 9 to 40 per cent in menopausal women, but most of the 25 or so trials done later showed no difference from placebos.
More than soy's effectiveness is now under scrutiny: A few scientists are actually voicing fears about its safety. Yet even as some soy fears grow and much of its promise is being shot down, new possibilities are popping up.
A recent study suggested that if women consume soy during the third trimester of pregnancy, it could help program fetuses with a craving for healthful foods and a good metabolism.
"Soy is eaten by two-thirds of the world's population," says Dr David Heber, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Centre for Human Nutrition - apparently quite safely. If anything is problematic, nutritionists say, it is the habit of assuming that if a little of something is good, then a lot must be really good.
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