The soybean has a very bipolar reputation. Depending on who you ask, it’s either processed poison or savory salvation. Who’s correct? And is the subject so black and white?
It seems to be a common opinion that in order to be vegan, you must replace meat in your diet with soy products. This is completely false. Many vegans choose to avoid soy products in their diets for a variety of reasons. Vegan or not, avoiding soy products may be the result of a food allergy, a hormone imbalance, or the desire to consume a diet of primarily whole foods.
Soy products are available in many forms. Like many foods, they can be eaten in their natural whole state, or processed. How they are processed alters their digestibility. Whole and fermented soy products like edamame, soynuts, tempeh, miso and shoyu are considered to be the healthiest. Soy milk and tofu made from whole soybeans could be considered next in line. Meat analogs and other products made from soy protein isolate are highly processed, considerably less nutritious and the most difficult to digest.
One problem with studies claiming soy products are unhealthy is that they were carried out on animals with vastly different nutritional requirements than humans.
Traditional soy foods made from whole soybeans are a major staple of some of the longest-lived populations on the planet. Anti-soy campaigns are continually at odds with hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. It would seem prudent to avoid soy products if you are sensitive to them, or have a condition such as endometriosis or an estrogen-positive breast tumor. When eating soy, focus on organic whole and fermented forms to maximize nutrition and digestibility.
For more in depth information about the soy controversy, you may want to read this article by John Robbins http://ow.ly/n78qS and this article by Neal Barnard, M.D. http://ow.ly/n78sQ
