Anti-Nausea

20 Recipes to Change Your Mind About Soy

SCCA registered dietitian Laura Buono, RD, CSO, CD, CNSC, wants you to know that it’s okay to enjoy soy foods. Soy is a known nutritional powerhouse, but they’ve gotten a bad rap because certain studies connect them to breast cancer. When in reality, there is little reason to be afraid of soy. First, most of the studies that showed a negative impact of soy foods were done on... animals, not humans. Secondly, the source of most of the fear comes from the fact that soy contains isoflavones – considered a phytoestrogen, which was popularly believed to be linked to tumor progression many years ago. But, recent studies show that phytoestrogens actually have a protective benefit against breast cancer because phytoestrogens can bind to estrogen receptors in the body and block the effect of the estrogen hormone. In fact, in countries like Japan and China, where soy intake is the highest, the incidence of breast cancer is the lowest.