A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
posted on 26 Jul 2006 by maki ::
14 comments
There was a report in yesterday's Guardian about the supposed dangers of soy products. I am rather dubious about the claims, simply because some of the 'facts' stated about the use of soy beans in Asian cuisine, or Japanese cuisine in particular, are just plain wrong. The implication made in the article is that all soy products are fermented for a long time in Japanese cuisines, but this is simply not true. Only miso and soy sauce and like products - which are only consumed in very small quantities, since they are quite salty - fit that description.
Here is the ways that, as far as I know that soy has commonly been consumed in Japan for hundreds of years, and how I grew up eating them in a household with two Japanese parents.
- As tofu. The way that tofu is made is not described correctly at all in this report:
After the long, slow boiling of soya beans in water to eliminate toxins, a curdling agent was added to the liquid to separate it. The curds would then be pressed to make tofu and the whey, in which the antinutrients were concentrated, would be thrown away.
If soy beans were cooked for a long time, they turn into the consistency that any cooked dried beans turn into - mealy and starchy - thus making it impossible to express soy milk from. As far as I know soy milk for tofu is made the way I described it in my how to make tofu series, by soaking the beans then grinding them up before cooking the resulting pulp for a relatively short time (less than 30 minutes) to produce soy milk. The whey is usually thrown away, simply because nigari, the coagulant, has a bitter taste. However, some Japanese households used to save the whey for making the next batch of tofu.
- As various tofu-based products: aburaage, atsuage, yuba, etc. Also various foods made from tofu such as ganmodoki.
- As natto, which are boiled and fermented soy beans. They are not, however, fermented for "a very long time" as the article at one point states all soy bean products are, but only for a few days. (My grandmother used to make natto at home, fermenting the beans in the warm kotatsu, a heated covered table.)
- As cooked whole dried beans, often together with hijiki (a type of seaweed), or mixed with steamed rice (daizu gohan, or soy bean rice). This goes against the quote from one of the interviewees, who produces soy sauce - "I never saw soy beans on the table in Japan - they're indigestible." Raw soy beans are indigestible for sure...so are all raw dried beans. I have to think he was misquoted somehow, if he really did live in Japan for 18 years and has a Japanese wife. Of course I guess it's likely she is from the Kansai region where they don't eat natto... This is the danger really of relying on anecdotal evidence.
- As green immature soy beans, boiled - edamame.
- Finally, as miso and soy sauce; both of these items are fermented for a long period.
Missing from the list is soy milk, which is called to-nyuu in Japan. Traditionally people didn't drink soy milk - it's just in the last two or three decades that it's been touted as a healthy alternative to milk. When I was going to school in Japan, our school lunches always had a bottle or carton of milk. Most people still drink milk rather than soy milk. I would even guess that proportionately more Americans now drink soy milk than Japanese people, though I don't have the facts to back this up.
It's quite possible that industrially produced soy products are not necessarily good for you - in my opinion, it's always a good idea to question just how good manufactured and engineered food products are for you. However, the items listed as facts in the report really aren't do make me skeptical about the veracity of the whole piece. And is soy milk, which is cooked, bad for you? I'm skeptical about that too.
Although Japanese use of soy was used as the primary examples, the article also made a blanket statement about all Asian cuisines. If you're Asian, what did you grow up eating? What about soy milk, which seems to be the primary focus of criticism?
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A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
Maki
I don’t think you’ve been entirely fair to the article…
Their main point was not to say that Japanese styles of eating soya were problematic but that they showed how much care needed to go into eating soy whereas modern soy food (burgers, milk etc) has only been processed to split it into oils, proteins etc without regard for the toxins and oestrogens.
Christopher Dawson, the guy who lived in Japan for 18 years, runs Clearspring (http://www.clearspring.co.uk/ - website being updated at the moment though) which is the best source for Japanese ingredients in the UK as far as I have been able to find, he used to work for Mitoku in Japan. The Clearspring Organic Mikawa Mirin is truly wonderful.
The article does get some facts wrong about Japanese cooking, no doubt, but their general point is that Japanese soya use is generally done with appropriate cooking and moderated consumption. Western veggies are eating toxin-laden soya in chillis, burgers, sausages, pseudo-cheeses and in ‘milks’ and ‘yogurts’. This is not good.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
Hi!
I have an interesting link about soy here:
http://www.foodrevolution.org/whataboutsoy.htm
It was given by a vegan blogger to answer people worried about soy.
I don’t know who is right or not in this “soy” controversy but I think the article is interesting.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
These kinds of “reports” enfuriate me.
I am sure if soy products were as harmful as these people would like to claim, the entire population of Asia would have died out centuries ago from consuming so much evil vile soy!
On the contrary, many many studies have shown that Asian peoples, nameley the Japanese, have the highest health and longevity in the world. I would think it would be obvious that a high soy diet has something to do with it… not the opposite.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
“Toxins” is really pretty misleading. They don’t say which specific chemicals in soybeans are “toxins”, and the article is careful to associate that word with isoflavones and estrogen-like compounds. Estrogen is not a toxin, tho having too much can be quite harmful to males. Males are somewhat likely to have bodies that process the estrogen-like soy compounds as estrogen. It’d take a lot of soy to give a female side effects from too much estrogen. Further, the estrogen-like compounds in soy don’t get processed as estrogen by females (usually, humans vary a lot so there may be some females who would process it as estrogen). Isoflavones are also not automatically toxic.
Please note that describing soy as being like “eating 5 birth control pills a day” is highly misleading. If that were true, you’d expect to see dietary disturbances (vomiting, nausea), reduced fertility in females with high soy product consumption, and a whole host of other effects. Some males do experience symptoms where their bodies exhibit more feminine traits if they have high soy consumption, but this is not something that happens to all men who eat soy.
So it might be worth getting hyped over soy, but that article is no reason to. If they’d named the compounds they considered toxins, I might take it more seriously.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
We never ate much soy growing up in my Chinese family. Then again, we probably didn’t eat a typical Chinese diet in the US. :P My mum doesn’t think soy is good for health. She’s not a fan of dairy either, so I rarely drank soy milk or regular milk growing up. …But I think I came out alright. Maybe. .___.
My mum thinks a lot of things are bad, but to me it’s ridiculous to think any one food with a long history is super evil or else, as Lea said, people wouldn’t have been able to live on these foods. (Not that being alive necessarily equates to health considering how many people die in hospitals, but…you know what I mean.) My mum will tell me how bad wheat is…and then eat a buttered croissant. Argh!
On the opposite end of the “THIS FOOD IS SO EVIL!” scale, some foods get over-exposed as being a miracle cure for everything. Surely there are foods that are known for being healthy/unhealthy, but no single food will erase disease and unless I’m presented with double-deep fried toxic sludge I’d rather not freak out too much about how harmful something is. ;)
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
I did read the original article, and I am still a bit confused. The article looks to me as being pretty sloppy slapped together. It could be that it has been written by a decent science journalist, but then butchered by a not so knowledgeable editor, or it could have been that the journalist simply did not really know what she was writing about.
About Dawson: I have a suspicion that he got seriously misquoted (the more favorable for him suspicion…).
However, the description of the soy milk/tofu production does not make much sense at all. As said, cooking the beans for a long time simply creates a mush, and on the other hand, boiling the beans in water for extended times will make sure that the (valuable) amino acids get cracked. Which means that the “healthy” substances are simply gone (and one can assume that the oestrogen-like compounds will get cracked too.
It is understandable that such imprecisions in the article hurt the credibility of the rest (which might actually be correct).
One thing can be interpreted into the article, and that is that highly industrially produced products may be questionable.
Ah, yeah, about soy milk… to claim that it is “good” needs some kind of “special” palate … I personally hate that hayy flavor.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
I grew up eating lots of tofu and drinking soy milk (the Vitasoy box drinks!) on occasion too, though my Chinese American family normally drank regular cow milk at home. The thing about how tofu is prepared in Chinese restaurants & kitchens is that it’s often fried, much like aburaage… I hardly ever get to eat it cooked well in its fresh state, though I suppose that this is done mostly in the home (my grandfather cooks cubes of fresh tofu with frozen peas… this isn’t very tasty though.)
As for soy milk, Chinese folks seem to like it sweet, a la Vitasoy — and all of that added sugar can’t be good for you!
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
Jason: I think that the article is very sloppily written and researched (or perhaps, as max suggests, poorly edited). This distracts from its message. It’s quite surprising, given that it comes from the Guardian, which is maybe my favorite UK newspaper. It’s not measured and I found the writer’s range of interviewees and research to be quite inadequate too. As you say, she probably is making the point that industrially produced soy products are dangerous but the message is lost in the mire, in my opinion. As Emily says, some terms were thrown about too lightly, like the birth control pill thing.
Robyn: I wonder why your mother thought soy was not good - or for that matter milk?
plume, thanks for that link! I’m going to put it in my next post so people who don’t read comments might see it too.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
Maki - Agreed it’s a sloppy article and I’m probably giving them the benefit of the doubt because it is The Guardian who are usually very good (about the only paper I can read apart from IHT without getting fed up).
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
Maybe she thinks there are better foods out there that could replace tofu and soy…or that they’re not that needed in general. I’m not a big fan of plain milk, but I don’t mind it as much now as I used to. In 9th grade I gave a presentation about why milk is bad and my class thought I was insane (thankfully, my teacher didn’t). I doubt I would choose a topic like that today as I don’t think milk is really bad or awesome (I got sick of “Got Milk” ads after seeing a gazillion of em over my lifetime). It’s…useful. And it’s good for cheese and ice cream. :] If I could, I wouldn’t mind trying milk fresh from the cow, although I suppose a lot of people would find that more disgusting than regular factory made milk, stuff that kinda grosses ME out.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
Fresh milk from a cow is unbelievable.
When my sister Mayumi visited Switzerland, she couldn’t stand the regular (full-fat), fresh milk because to her it tasted like cream. She had gotten too used to drinking watery skim milk…
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
You forgot to mention the spate of crank articles about how all Asians are supposedly lactose intolerant that are popping up in the U.S. media. As you mentioned, every school lunch in Japan since MacArthur has featured milk, and kyuushoku blogs have now popped up all over the place documenting that fact.
Soy milk does seem to be rather more popular these days, but it’s still maybe a 5-to-1 ratio, judging by shelf space in the markets.
I think the Japanese experience puts the lie to all the soy danger hysteria, as it does to the mercury-in-fish hysteria.
A problematic report on the 'dangers' of soy
Toxicity is not just about the chemical compound per se, it is also about dose, duration and the unique response of the individual. Lea is correct; isoflavones are not toxic just because they are isoflavones, however but they do illicit estrogenic effects at doses that are readily achieved from consuming soy. That is why there is much evidence that shows that dietary exposure to soy isoflavones causes infertility in all manner of experimental animals and can markedly alter the menstrual cycle of adult women.
What really troubles me is the massive amounts of the isoflavones that infants fed solely soy formulas are exposed to. You see here we have a situation were we have a potentially toxic compound coupled with large dose, long duration in highly susceptible targets. Sad to say the “5-birth control pills a day” is true; it refers to the amount of estrogenic equivalency that infants fed solely on a soy-formula are exposed to. That the soy industry can continue to expose infants all over the world in such as way when they have the ability to remove isoflavones from soy formulas is unforgivable.
But isoflavones are not just estrogens. It is little known that the soy isoflavones are also potent anti-thyroid agents, more potent that the drugs that are given to people with hyperthyroidism. In fact isoflavones are best viewed as naturally occurring endocrine disruptors. They are present in the soy bean for one reason – to stop things eating them! Adults would be wise to eat soy products in moderation and even wiser to minimise isoflavones exposure in infants, children and adolescents.
soya bean milk
Very late to the discussion, but anyways…. In Singapore and Malaysia, soya bean milk （dou-nai 豆奶） is a very common drink. Although there are plenty of canned or packet commercial varieties, it is also commonly sold freshly made, alongside beverages like fresh fruit juices, and another local fave, fresh sugarcane juice. I love my soya bean milk, steaming hot and fresh from the pot. There is that stomach warming, thick and soothing factor not unlike cow’s milk, but without the lactose which I can’t take too much of. At my favourite soya bean milk stalls, the sugar syrup is added just before serving, so you can ask for less, or omit the sugar altogether. You can drink it plain, or do the Taiwanese style and dunk deep fried dough (you-tiao). Other interesting variations on the standard bean milk you can choose from include ginger, chocolate, almond, and chinchow (a black-coloured herb beverage with julienned herb-infused jelly - the black wormy things make an interesting contrast with the white milky soya bean milk) Soya bean milk has always been seen as a healthy drink here - it is commonly believed that it in fact detoxes (!) I’ve heard accounts of factory workers, whose work causes them to inhale alot of smoke/dust, swear by their daily dose of soya bean milk to detox.
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