Dear Kaayla,
People in Asia have been eating soy for 10,000 years. So how could there possibly be a problem?
GT

Dear GT,
This is a myth perpetuated by the soy industry. Soy has been a food in China for a little more than 2000 years. Farmers grew soybean plants only as “green manure” — as a cover crop plowed under to enrich the soil. Soy was a fertilizer, not a food. The ancient Chinese originally developed the technique for making soybean paste (best known by the Japanese term miso) to preserve protein-rich animal foods. This process was first applied to soybeans and grains in the second century BC at the earliest and appeared in Japan around 500 AD. Legend holds that tofu was invented in China in 164 BC and came to Japan in the eighth century AD. Natto entered the food supply around 1000AD and tempeh no earlier than the 1600s.

Dear Kaayla,
I love my soy milk. Whenever I need a lift, I drink a glass. Thanks to soy milk, I’ve gotten off Diet Coke.
SO

Dear SO,
Glad to hear you are off the diet sodas. Check the ingredient list on your soy milk and you’ll almost certainly find a lot of sugar. It might be named cane sugar, barley malt, rice sugar, fructose, corn syrup. Whatever, it’s sugar. The most likely reason that you feel better after drinking your soy milk is that you are getting a sugar hit.
The second possibility is that the soy estrogens are stimulating your thyroid. For some people this results in a mildly hyperactive thyroid with short-term energy gain. The down side is that over the long run your thyroid may go down, sinking into hypothyroidism. That means loss of energy, cognitive decline, brain fog. In my opinion the long-term risks of soy do not justify any short term benefit.

Dear Kaayla,
I am lactose intolerant and cannot eat any dairy products. If I can’t use soy milk what am I supposed to put on my cereal?
FB

Dear FB,
You might want to rethink the cereal. Cold cereals – even health food versions – are not very healthy. They are hard to digest and high in carbs. Dr. Mercola has some excellent breakfast suggestions in his book The No Grain Diet (in most bookstores) and his new book Dr Mercola’s Total Health available on his website www.mercola.com.

Dear Kaayla,
I’ll be leaving soon to get the little girl I’m adopting from China. I was told to put her on soy formula, but now I’m afraid to. Help!
GH

Dear GH,
Congratulations! I adopted my children too, a son from Korea and a daughter from Vietnam. I fed my children homemade formulas using the recipes in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. You can order it on Amazon or from www.newtrendspublishing.com. Yes, it takes extra time but I’ve never seen a child who didn’t thrive on one of these recipes. This wonderful book also offers tips on how to easily improve some of the commercially available dairy formulas. Good luck!

Dear Kaayla,
I take great care to buy only organic as I’m sure all the problems with soy are because of GM soy. I think you should make this clear to your readers. Not all soys are alike.
DF

Dear DF,
True, organic soy will ensure fewer pesticide residues than GM (genetically modified) soy. I highly recommend buying organic products whenever possible. That said, soy is a problem whether it is organic or not. All modern soy products carry a load of antinutrients and toxins including protease inhibitors, phytates, saponins, isoflavones and other components that have been proven to cause digestive distress, immune system breakdown, thyroid dysfunction, reproductive problems, etc, etc.

Dear Kaayla,
I attend lots of vegetarian potlucks. I went to your class The Whole Soy Story and believe your warnings against too much soy. I buy very few soy products myself but still like to spend time with my vegetarian friends. Can you tell me again, how much soy is safe for me to eat?
JK

Dear JK,
If you are healthy, go ahead and enjoy the occasional vegetarian potluck. If possible, stick to old-fashioned soy products (miso, tempeh, natto, shoyu, tamari) and eat them at the levels traditionally consumed in Asia. The Japanese eat the most but still average just a few tablespoons. On a weekly basis, a few cups of miso soup, a small serving of tempeh or natto and the modest use of shoyu or tamari in cooking should not be a problem. A little tofu (such as three little cubes you’d typically find in your miso soup at a Japanese restaurant would also be okay. I wouldn’t even worry about the occasional ingestion of Tofurky, Veat, Boca burger or other of the highly processed, high tech modern American soy foods. The important thing is don’t “pig out.”When you join your friends, be a vege-tarian not a soya-tarian.

Dear Kaayla,
I’ve been drinking a soy protein shake every morning for breakfast. I have not increased the number of calories in my diet yet seem to be gaining weight. The only change in my diet is the soy yet I’m being told that soy helps you lose weight. What do you think?
JR

Dear JR,
Traditionally, the Chinese only ate only products made from whole soy beans. When the bean was split into oil and protein, the oil was used to fuel kerosene-type lamps and the soy protein was used as a fertilizer. It was only used for animal feed when the goal was to “fatten” the animals. Some brands of soy protein contain high levels of isoflavones. It only took 35 mg of isoflavones a day in a clinical trial to cause hypothyroidism in healthy Japanese men and women. Hypothyroidism means low thyroid function. This is likely to result in a loss of energy and weight gain, as well as other possible symptoms such as hair loss, depression, etc.

Dear Kaayla,
I’ve heard all the stories about soy causing hypothyroidism. I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism already when I started taking a soy shake every day. Now I feel lots more pep and energy. So either I am an exception or you are wrong.
KG

Dear KG,
Occasionally, people who start taking soy shakes will experience increased energy and metabolism. This is caused by stimulation to the thyroid and is usually temporary, after which the thyroid wears down and the person goes into long-term hypothyroidism. Talk to your doctor, give him or her the chapter from The Whole Soy Story on soy and the thyroid. You might want to reconsider the soy.

Dear Kaayla,
I love Christiane Northrup’s books and she says wonderful things about a product named Revival. I checked their website and learned that the problems you attribute to soy are irrelevant with Revival because of the care with which they manufacture the product. Can you comment?
DF

Dear DF,
It may be true that Revival’s manufacturing process involves lower and less caustic alkaline levels than other commercial processing methods. If so, this would result in lower levels of a toxin known as lysinoalanine. That’s to the good. However, Revival boasts that it contains 160 mg isoflavones per serving. That is more than four times that the amount that caused thyroid damage in a clinical trial using healthy Japanese men and women. It is almost four times the amount that has disturbed the menstrual cycles of healthy women. I could go on about the dangers of isoflavones — and do in The Whole Soy Story. I hear more complaints about Revival than any other product on the market. Dr. Northrup herself admits to having been recently diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Why take the risk?

Dear Kaayla,
I’ve read your warnings about soy formula and wonder how the formulas on the market differ from soy formulas used for centuries in Japan and China.
SP

Dear SP,
Soy formula was never used traditionally in Asia. Babies that couldn’t be breast fed by their birth moms were either given to a wet nurse or fed a homemade dairy formula. Soy formula was first developed in China in the late 1920s and 1930s. I found that late date hard to believe until I got a hold of some 1936 and 1938 articles from the Chinese Medical Journal. Historian William Shurtleff of the Soy Center in Lafayette, CA, tells us that first person to manufacture soy formula in China was an American, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary named Dr. Harry W. Miller.