Soy and Health : SuperFoodsRx

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Soy and Health

Table of Contents

1.	Overview
2.	Soy, The Blank Canvas
3.	Soy and Lactose Intolerance
4.	Soy - The Alternate Protein
5.	Soy and Health
6.	Isoflavones in Soy Foods
7.	Soy in the Kitchen
8.	Kitchen Tofu Tip

Soy has long been recognized as a highly nutritious food. Western scientists became particularly interested in soy when they noticed that people eating Asian diets enjoyed lower rates of heart disease as well as less cancer and osteoporosis, and had fewer hormonal problems than those eating a typical Western diet. While much research still has to be done, there is now broad agreement on various connections between soy and health promotion.

Soy’s most conclusively demonstrated benefit concerns cardiovascular health. There have been extensive studies on the cholesterol-lowering effect of soy. One frequently cited study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1995, describes an analysis of thirty-eight different studies. The authors found that consumption of soy protein resulted in significant reductions in total cholesterol (9.3 percent). LDL cholesterol (12.9 percent), and triglycerides (10.5 percent) with a small though not significant increase in HDL cholesterol. A recent study (March 2003) in the Journal of Nutrition demonstrated that the intake of soy foods among the premenopausal women subjects was inversely related to their risk for coronary artery disease and stroke as well as other disorders. Similar studies have demonstrated the same effect with people with diabetes and people with high cholesterol.

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