Juicing For Health - Soya Bean & The Myths
Overview
Soya can be an important addition to the vegan lifestyle, products such as soya milk, tofu etc easily replace the non vegan equivalent. Soya products are a tasty and easy way to meet your protein needs on a vegan diet, being that soya contains all the essential amino acids making it a complete protein. Not only that soya is rich in isoflavones and other health promoting phytonutrients which have shown many benefits in studies.
Soya has shown some great health benefits in studies such as improving bone health, easing menopausal and hormonal imbalance symptoms, improving heart health and reducing the risk of certain cancers such as those of the breast, prostate and colon.
There is so much controversy regarding soya products that at one time i was even put off trying them myself due to the myths. These myths usually stem from users on message boards and those who don't understand how to read the studies properly.
One of the top myths surrounding soya is the phyto-estrogen content. Phyto-estrogen's are weak estrogen compounds which lock up the receptor sites so that more harmful estrogen's aren't absorbed. Many studies on soya have found that the benefits such as breast cancer prevention, improving bone density etc are directly related to the isoflavones soya contains. It always makes me laugh when people say don't eat soya it will make you gay, grow breasts, become a female etc due to the isoflavone phyto-estrogen's but they will happily eat other foods such as broccoli which also contain these compounds. These are often same people who have no problem wolfing down slabs of meat which contain hormones much stronger than phyto-estrogen's.
The most common myth is about how soya can cause hypothyroidism through its goitrogen content. This is only partially true, soya does contain goitrogenic compounds but cooking and fermentation destroy these substances. All of soya products come under one of these categories such as miso being fermented and tofu etc being cooked. No one eats raw soya beans. Goitrogens are also present in many other foods such as broccoli and other vegetables from the brassica family.
Another myth is the phytic acid content of soya causing all sorts of problems but again this really isn't a problem. Research has also shown phytic acid has many health benefits such as antioxidant properties, preventing iron overload, possible anti-cancer benefits, binding heavy metals, lowering blood glucose response and much more. Again like many of the other myths above other foods such as grains, strawberries, some seeds etc all contain phytic acid and these foods are considered healthy. Infact many of these foods contain much higher levels of phytates than soya beans.
The trypsin inhibitors are another common issue that is brought up regarding soya and yet again cooking inactivates these compounds. Many other foods such as grains and seeds also contain these same trypsin inhibitors.
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