Part of living naturally is eating as natural as possible. Don't always believe the claims that this food or that food is good for you. Always research it thoroughly and find out for yourself. One of the foods that we have been told is healthy and should be a vital part of our diet is not always good for us. It can actually be detrimental to our health.

What is this food? It is soy, which has been marketed as the perfect food and the solution to many of our health problems. It has been advertised to prevent heart disease, reduce occurrence of hot flashes in menopausal women, make our bones strong, prevent us from aging and more. Now there is even soy infant formula. If it has so many benefits, why not start our young out eating it? But does it have all of those benefits?

Soy is supposed to help a person lose weight. Will it? Farmers give their livestock soy feed to fatten them up as quickly as possible before the slaughter. Who is to say it won’t fatten us up just as quickly?

Pregnant women who drink soy milk, eat soy burgers and other soy saturated foods are putting their developing fetuses at risk for lifelong health problems.

Would you feed your children a product that would poison them over time? Soy contains large amounts of estrogen. If you are feeding your baby with soy infant formula, you are feeding your child the equivalent of 5 birth control pills a day. Soy formula is full of soy protein isolate. This product has never been give GRAS status, or “generally recognized as safe” by the U.S. government, yet it is allowed to be put in formula for infants. If you are unable to breastfeed or if your baby is allergic to cow’s milk, why not give them goat’s milk or coconut milk instead?

Have you ever wondered how so much estrogen would affect your baby? The estrogen in soy tends to feminize males and make them reach puberty at a slower rate than normal. It tends to speed up the onset of puberty and the beginnings of the menstrual cycle in females.

As a normal adult, how much soy do you consume? Probably more than you realize. Look at the list of ingredients on your container of vegetable oil. Chances are the only thing it contains is soybean oil. So every time you cook with vegetable oil, you are actually cooking with soybean oil.

Soy appears in most processed foods that we buy, just not always under the name soy. It goes by many other names. If you are trying to do the almost impossible and keep soy out of your diet, you need to watch out for soy by other names in the ingredients - textured vegetable protein (TVP), textured plant protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), vegetable protein concentrate, vegetable oil, MSG (monosodium glutamate). The ingredients lecithin, vegetable broth, bullion, natural flavor, and mono-diglyceride do not always come from soy, but they most likely do.

Is there any soy that is good for us and safe to eat? Yes, it is safe as long as it is fermented. Tempeh, natto, miso and soy sauce are fermented, therefore they are fine. Fermentation changes the molecular structure of soy making it safe for consumption.

Be aware that any processed food you buy may contain soy, even if it is not listed as one of the ingredients. The only way to be sure that what you are eating does not contain soy is to make it from scratch yourself.