Hello Nick,
Another great forum. Your wife is very lucky.
I grew up in farm country. Sow beans were raised only for livestock feed and to make foods to send as charitable contributions to starving underdeveloped countries in order to create and maintain good will. As a child we were warned never to eat them.
As I grew older, I noticed how the soy product found its way into American foods as fillers. It is difficult to avoid it. I read labels because I am allergic to so many things in foods and medicines.
Some brilliant advertiser came up with the bright idea of soys benefits to fight diseases. I have no faith in any of those claims. They are probably made so folks can make money. As an old man my father still refused to eat anything that contained "food fit only for the hogs". Being a disenfranchised farmer, he had his own beefs.
There are entire websites that warn against human consumption of soy products especially the ones that are processed to great length. If you back track the history you will see that soy farmers (basically all farmers) were in serious trouble some thirty years ago because the number of farms across america was decreasing. The number of farms raising livestock dropped drastically also. The demand for soy as a feed product decreased immensely. They had to create a need for the product. Folks who live by soy are supporting hundreds of farms that produce the beans.
Japanese people have been said to have the lowest incidence of heart disease, cancer and other diseases that soy is supposed to inhibit. I think this may be attributed more to the low incidence of fried and high fat foods, high intake of fish and vegetable products including seaweed and less to do with the consumption of soy products. This is a reason that you see very few fat Japanese people unless they have been Americanized. We a the world champions of the additive.
Over the counter products used to treat menopause containing soy products are a joke to me. I have tried them all. They create gas and fermentation in my stomach. I may be a special case since my doctors say that my menopausal symptoms have been magnified by a very illusive autoimmune disease that they have not quite named in my case. In other words, menopause is a disease for me. The guessing and testing is getting very tiresome.
My 3 month old granddaughter is now on soymilk because of a bad reaction to milk. I am very concerned about her.
Again, thank you for your very informative forums. I have been avoiding soy for sometime now.
Keep up the good work,
Lucy
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