soya..... boon or bane

[SmileAlways]

HI All

I would really like to know what fellow hubbers think about soya and it's nutritional content.

On one side, I hear that Soya is filled with proteins and has no cholestrol....so its good for people with protein deficiency. A very famous MLM product promotes soya powder for its high protein content.

ON the other hand, I hear arguments that soya has been projected with this image by intense lobbying in US of A. That ...soya as such is not high in any nutritional content...and it just is a yet another hyped up produce of US of A.
Doctors (obviously ...not all) are paid money to recommend soya products for their patients with High BP and cholosterol.
etc...etc...



So...what do you say??

[dsath]

Chinese are using Soy sauce everyday in their cooking and they don't seem to have any problems with it.

[dev]

Soy products like tofu, soya chunks etc are all highly processed ... Since I like to eat stuffs that don't undergo much processing, I try to avoid soy pdts though they are said to be very nutritious... I guess soy milk is the least processed food derived from soy... so that should be fine...

[grl95014]

I was using Organic Soymilk for my cereal everyday as I was trying to avoid too many dairy products when I read some scary articles that said that there are many diseases caused by too much intake of soy - isoflavone induced breast cancer, and that it drastically lowers the male hormone testosterone etc. These were some well researched articles and you may google on topics like "soy testosterone cancer" to get the information.
So, I have gone back to the old Indian tradition of drinking a lot of Cow's milk. Soy should be consumed less than in 3 meals a week in my opinion. Try to buy only non-GMO organic soy products - especially Tofu and soy milk. We don't know why the Japanese and Chinese are so healthy even after eating so much soy because their diet plan may involve eating other stuff that may compensate for any ill effects of soy. Anyway please take my post for all it is worth which is $0.02 only :D

[pavalamani pragasam]

There is a warning going round about dangers of excessive use of soya . But generally , recent advice from doctors, esp. lady doctors is a judicial amount of soya intake is beneficial for correcting many menstrual, homonal problems in ladies.
I know some of my friends who take wheat to the mill to get it ground to flour add a quantity of soya with the wheat & say the chappathis are soft. One of neibours gives soya sundal to children returning from school in the evening. The smell of soya is not very good. My discreet use of soya is this: when I soak rice & urad dhal for grinding for idli/dosa batter I add a little soya(the white variety) to the rice. Thus silently(!) the family gets a daily dose of soya. I also powder the mealmaker cubes sold in the stores & add a little bit of it to dhoor dhal before pressurecooking it.