too much soy??

[tessa]

Just curious if anyone had heard that drinking too much soy milk can be harmful. My 18 month-old drinks about 3-12 ounce bottles a day. Is there any harm there?? Plus, he usually has an 8 ounce soy yogurt, and some other type of soy foods too.
Thanks.

[Erin Pavlina]

Some people believe that consuming soy products are harmful. I think for the most part that it's the over-processed products they are referring to.

We switched from drinking soy milk to drinking rice milk to cut back on our soy intake. But we still eat soy in the form of soy yogurt, veggie burgers, chick-free nuggets, etc.

You may want to consider switching to rice milk for baking and drinking. My daughter loves rice milk.

[tessa]

Thank you so much. My little one is a great eater!!
However, we have yet to ween him off the bottle at nap time and
bed time. My husband noted that gosh we were going throug so much soy milk. We began to think too much? Next stop at the grocer I will get the "Rice Milk" instead instead of "Soy" right now he drinks three 9oz bottles a day. Does anyone know if "Rice Milk" contains the same Fat and vitamins needed for a 1 1/2 year old. Keep in mind we a tofu eating and soy yogurt loving family....

Tessa

[sophie]

Hi Tessa
We were also a little worried about too much soy. My son (now 6 and a half) was weaned at 15 months and has been drinking soy milk (vitasoy ) since then, until about 6 months ago when we cut down on it. My daughter now aged 4 was intolerant to soy so after weaning at 18 months she had almond milk for a while (which I made) then rice milk, we give her the fortified one. Rice milk contains very little protein so you need to make sure they're getting protein from other sources, if you're having tofu and soy yogurt then it should be fine, We recently discovered oat milk which has more protein than rice milk and is really yummy so I get that as well now. We still eat soy products but we decided cut down so that it was not our main food. Maybe you could altermate between soy and rice milk and try oat milk if it's available where you live. Good luck!

[vegan tart]

I personally don't eat soy products because they make me feel awful. There are plenty of other plant sources of nutrition out there. Eat chickpeas, quinoa, almonds, brown rice, sunflower seeds, aduki beans, sprouts, etc etc the list is endless. As long as one is creative they do not have to eat much soy at all. I personally wouldn't overload my kid's diets with it, there isn't any need.

[Sheree]

I think soy is wonderful, but I try not to eat it at every meal, or even everyday. As was said previously, there are plenty of other sources, so I really try to mix it up for my family. I try not to consume too much of the processed soy foods, but mostly because of the other stuff that's sometimes in it (refined sugar, hydrogenated oil, etc). Variety is really best. If we eat too much of anything, we can develop an allergy.

[Katharina]

IMO organic soy is fine. You may want to substitute some of the soy with rice-, almond- ,etc.- based drinks, if you are worried.

[alexis]

oat milk is a good choice, Oatly's vanilla oat milk tasts really nice, is alot creamier than soy milk but contains cane sugar...so maybe the plain one would b a better idea...

[Sheree]

I feel like such a bearer of bad news sometimes....I don't know what to believe anymore, but I've been researching soy and found some scary stuff about giving it to babies:

"A disturbing example of the industry's heft is the marketing of soy-based infant formulas. While considered a life-saver for the roughly 3% to 4% of infants who are lactose-intolerant, this "healthy" alternative is so vigorously advertised that it claims a whopping 25% share of total infant formula sales. "It's criminal that soy formulas are being sold in the marketplace," says Fallon. "Infants who are exclusively fed soy formula get 10 times the dose of phytoestrogens found in a healthy Asian diet. Such excess can be harmful."


Fallon also points out that the soy industry has known since the 1950s that soy formulas contain thyroid-suppressing agents. Though many have lobbied to have isoflavones removed from soy formulas, the high cost of doing so has prevented it from happening.


For infants, any amount of soy is too much, according to the Soy Online Service (http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/). Unborn children exposed to high levels of antithyroid agents, the Web site says, are at high risk for prematurity and reproductive problems. Fitzpatrick, who heads the online service, also believes that longterm feeding of soy formulas can raise the risk of thyroid cancer"

http://goddessdiet.com/Reports/NYDailyNews.htm More can be found here

[VOW]

Interesting article. I noticed that the author said that soy formula has been around since the 1950s. If there are such TERRIBLE consequences to feeding infants soy formula, is there an epidemic of middle-aged people suffering from all these maladies because they were fed soy?

In the 1950s, moms were urged to bottle feed, because it was "more modern." And early formulas were simply canned evaporated milk, water, and Karo syrup. I bet you can trace the increasing obesity epidemic in the middle aged population because of THIS CRUD they were fed as babies. I bet you are going to find a higher proportion of allergy sufferers amongst the cows' milk based formula fed crowd than the soy formula crowd, too.

Statistics are wonderful. You can make them say ANYTHING with the right manipulation!

If you wish to include soy in your child's diet, by all means, do so. IMHO, raising a child in today's world with a Vegan diet will do them much more GOOD than the possible "harm" of eating and drinking soy.


~VOW

[Sheree]

I couldn't agree more with the argument that there would be "middle-aged" people suffering maladies" if soy were so bad, but the same could be said for meat, and hydrogenated fat, etc....just because there are many people who've grown up "fine" while consuming it, doesn't make it a good thing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't consume soy by any means. I'm just simply passing along info I've found to be interesting. This doesn't mean I'm going to go home and throw away all the soy-containing foods I have in the pantry and fridge (which are a LOT!), I'm just going to take it as personal reminder that variety is key.

Another reason I wanted to pass this info along is for the people who have questioned soy, namely in this particular thread, and want to research it some more themselves.

Maybe before I post further links, I'll first state that I'm simply putting it out there because I personally found it interesting and thought other people might too.

[sophie]

Sheree- good on you for posting articles. Don't feel like you can't just because some people might not agree!
I have read articles for and articles against soy. As I have said before, we use it in moderation. I think it's a useful protein but I just don't want it to be our main food source. One reason we stopped giving it to our son (he used to drink a lot of it), and gave our daughter rice/almond/oat milk intead (she was intolerant to soy as well) was that the daughter of a woman I know was on soy formula and had started growing breast tissue, at the age of 18 months! this kind of freaked me out. as soon as they stopped the formula the breast tissue stopped growing and went back to normal.
I know this is a complicated issue but it's good to hear all kinds of information as far as I'm concerned.
I also agree with Katharina that only organic or GE-free soy should be given to kids.

[Sheree]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Christa]

It should also be noted that some research that has found health issues associated with soy formula may not apply to other soy foods. Soy formula is not particularly similar to tofu - it has a lot of stuff in it that other soy products do not & is much more modified from its original state.

The only thing that research about soy formula shows is that formula is not healthy for babies. Cows milk formula has also been linked to health problems, although not all of the same ones. Each of these forms of formula create their own set of problems, and we shouldn't be formula feeding our babies if it can at all be avoided.

[go4green]

I read ( I can't remember where) that some potential causes of future food allergy are, eating something all the time and/or too early, as a child. Also, my nutritionist told me that soy can decrease or interfere with iron absorption (which may be slight, however, I watch my iron closely).

We love soy, but because I believe in the above, we strive for variety, and moderation, here are a couple of ways we do that:

We don't take soy products with our main iron foods or supplements. (Rice or nut or oat milk at breakfast, and soy yogurt, tofu and soy milk later in the day)

Amy's California veggie burgers are vegan and they don't contain soy, they do contain wheat (another food we try to limit) so we switch these up with other soy burgers often, I was happy to discover them.

I love tofu, TVP and tempeh but I have been trying to constantly cook or sprout different beans for variety and we'll also throw some different nuts in our pasta dishes or cashews on our veggie pizza etc. for protein and more variety.

~Jenna
P.S. we only buy orgainic soy-I am very concerned about GMO or GEI and chemicals

[Sheree]

GMO seems to definitely be the culprit (or rather, the government for allowing this "experiment"). I'm sure this is how soy has gotten some bad press lately. There are so many beans and grains that are genetically engineered these days, that I wouldn't be surprised if this has contributed to wheat allergies that seem quite common. This society we live can be pretty disgusting (to me anyway).

[Sheree]

I think the problem here is GMO....It's a very scary thing and I'm sure has a lot to do with the rising rate of mental illness as well as other illnesses. Unfortunately, till I can grow all my own food, I'll have to pay the high prices for organic products, and even then, who knows what's in the soil? Oh well, I'm getting a little fanatical here...it's just so frustrating that the government allows this crap to go on!!