Soy Proteins and Neurotoxins

[Rowyn]

For those of you out there who consume soy proteins, thought you would find this info helpful (and alarming). Here are some excerpts of an article I read recently:

"In order to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers, manufacturers of soy based fake meat try to make their products have as little fat as possible. The cheapest way to do this is by submerging soybeans in a bath of hexane to seperate the oil from the protein.

"If a non-organic product contains a soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, or texturized vegetable protein (veg burgers, protein shakes, infant formulas, protein bars....), you can be pretty sure it was made using soy beans that were made with hexane."

Hexane is commonly known as a pollutant and by product of gas refining and is a known neurotoxin.

Scary stuff, considering that it has been found that "nearly every major ingredient in conventional soy-based infant formula is hexane extracted".

Here's the link http://www.alternet.org/story/146439...h_a_neurotoxin

Basically, unless the veg burger or whatever is certified organic, it probably contains hexane. They did test many burgers to see which did, the list is quite surprising. To avoid hexane, it is not good enough to buy protein bars or soy products that say "mdae with organic ingredients", they can still contain the neurotoxin. For example, the Cliff bars have been proven to contain the contaminant. I didn't see any info yet on protein powders, but if it is in infant formula, you can bet its in our supplements too.

[runner03]

Thanks for the info! You always think it is healthier when you buy soy....hmmmm maybe not.

[just.demi]

As a vegetarian, I avoid all that fake meat for those exact reasons. It's always best to go to the natural source for protein, i.e. beans, nuts, eggs and dairy.

[SarcasticWalrus]

Oh man. I rarely eat fake meat, but cliff bars were a thing I used a lot of my meal plans on this semester in college (luckily i'm not getting them next year). But do you know if tofu/tempeh have this same problem???

[Rowyn]

Tofu and tempeh as well as soybeans/edamame themselves are more a whole food than a processed one. Its when you get into the processing of soy to denature the proteins to remove them in order to produce soy proteins for other products that you have problems. According to the article, sticking with certified organic will allow you to avoid the hexane issue. However, it has to be a product that is not "mostly" organic...it needs to be certified organic.

[freebirdmac]

Oh please, watch the movie Food Inc. It's not just soy. You guys just have no idea what you are consuming, even the chemicals in and used to make your supplements.

[Rowyn]

Lord, I made the mistake of posting this in general nutrition too, and the teens there are idiots!

Supplements worry me, since there is very little regulation of them. Each component of the supplement (vitamins, whatever) can be manufactured in whatever country, and as long as it is actually put together into the jar or capsule in the US, it can say "US product". Which means there could be any number of contaminants in them, as overseas manufacturing does not follow our guidelines. Look, if a Chinese manufacturer was okay with putting a toxic filler in their own infant formula which lead to the death and illness of babies, lord knows what goes into the stuff our manufacturers buy from overseas.

Anyway, whole soy products (edamame, tofu, tempeh, miso) have been used for centuries in Asian cultures as we know and they are healthy people. However, the soy craze has meant that we have soy products in EVERYTHING now. We eat MUCH more soy than they do, even if we are not deliberately purchasing soy products. And it is not whole soy, it is highly processed. Processing often requires chemical breakdown to extract proteins and that is not a good thing in most cases.

I don't know about you all, but when the soy milk/infant formula reached its high, all I wondered was

since when did soy plants grow mammary glands?

It takes ALOT of additives to mimic breast milk, or even dairy in general, especially when you are trying to create an animal product based on a plant.

[lilly_julia]

I think soy in general is not very good for our health, unless its fermented (like miso.) Tofu is a processed product, and usually does not come from within the united states!

soy linked to thyroid cancer: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/soya.asp