Has anyone else heard this? Is it true in your opinion?



I just got sent an email about Soy Milk that stated this:



"... . Many brands of soy and rice milk contain polyunsaturated vegetable oils which can contribute to an imbalance of essential fatty acids in your body. As harmless as this might sound, I am convinced that a chronic imbalance of essential fatty acids caused by regular consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils is a major cause of cardiovascular disease. Polyunsaturated fats that contribute to this harmful imbalance are found in safflower, corn, soybean, sunflower, and cottonseed oils. I recommend that you stay away from these oils completely. ..."



xx J

Haven't heard that one. As with all things soy, I'd be curious who is making the claim. There seems to be a lot of quackery regarding soy.

Well too much of any food is probably not great for you.






Well your first problem is that you read these kinds of emails. Don't trust the emails about penis enlargement either.



I don't agree with the claim. I don't really know what evidence Ben Kim has to make such a claim, but then again, I am not a fan of Mr. Kim.

I have no idea, but it doesn't mention any brands does it? Maybe some obscure brand does, but I don't remember seeing that in the list of ingred on Silk's pkging. I have read articles, and there have been posts about the dangers and positives about soy. I "gather" the fermented soy products are what should be consumed, vs the unfermented....like tempeh is a suggested fermented soy product, but the soy used for processing bean burgers is not.....tofu is ok too.



http://www.naturalnews.com/025513_so..._soybeans.html



I don't know how edemame fits in, although I guess that would be considered the whole soy bean, so is not recommended....this is good reading

Indeed.

I've never seen any oils added to soya milks (but note that I live in the UK). But I think it's quite common with rice milks. It's true that a high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is bad for your health. I believe safflower oil is particularly bad in this respect, and sunflower oil is not good either. Personally I try to avoid rice milks for this very reason. However, what you have to consider is the actual amounts of these oils, how much of it you actually consume etc.

I think that's true of most things.

I was just curious as to what others thought of this, the person that sent this too me was actually my husband! lol. He's off all dairy and found this info somewhere. I guess because we have kids he wants to be careful too. He's more interested in trying Almond Milk... we'll see how that goes, I've never had that before.



Thanks everyone

xx J

OK, the skinny on your chain email:



Original source of your excerpt:

http://www.drbenkim.com/articles-almondmilk.html


The author "Dr" Kim, cites no sources whatsoever:




I can't find any confirmation of his credentials on his website. His bio on another site says he is a chiropractor...

http://www.healthiertalk.com/users/bkim



Here's the lineup of 2% milk vs my soy milk (And I was being generous to compare using 2% rather than whole milk...)

Cow milk:

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/d...-products/73/2



Soy milk:

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/l...oducts/10542/2





The first and most important thing to learn about statements of nutrition (or any statements posed as fact) is that the source of the statement should always be verified and investigated.

In this case, it looks like a quack who saw dollar signs in health products...

Too much of anything is bad. There is that old saying about everything in moderation, and I think this applies here. That being said I think that most of what you hear about "too much soy" is pure bullcrap. Tofu and tempeh along with a whole host of other products are very common in Asia to the point that soy is eating in substantial portions on average for about 1.5 meals a day and there is no evidence of ill health effects.



That being said, anything in excess can kill you including the most basic of things such as oxygen and water (the good news it that you have to really force those two things with either an oxygen tank or drink like a gallon of water in some absurd amount of time.)

intersting havent heard about that before im not really soy person though but was intersting read

Sigh... again, here's the MOST balanced article I have ever read on soy. It tells both the benefits and detrimental effects of soy:



http://stanford.wellsphere.com/gener...ur-life/363232



Everything else you will read on the internet is mostly half lies.

^^^ what I wrote in my post was accurate, even by him...there is truth to the fermented soy



Guideline #1: Say YES to whole, real soy. The Okinawans are the world's longest-lived people, probably in part because of their diet. For more than 5 millennia, they've eaten whole, organic and fermented soy foods like miso, tempeh, tofu, soy milk, and edamame (young soybeans in the pod). One to two servings a day are fine.



Guideline #2: Say NO to processed soy. That includes soy protein isolate and concentrates, genetically engineered soy foods (typically made from Monsanto's Roundup soybeans), soy supplements, and soy junk foods like soy cheese, soy ice cream, soy oil, and soy burgers. They don't have the thousands of years of traditional use that whole soy foods do, are processed, and contain unhealthy fats and other compounds. I have real concerns about THESE types of soy.

I remain unconvinced that that processed soy deserves this demonizing.

well, at least I got my answer on edemame!

The question in the OP was not about soya, but about polyunsaturated oils.

I would agree with the first statement 100%...



TOO MUCH soy is not good for you, hence the reason it's considered "TOO MUCH". TOO MUCH, means an excessive amount... the question to how much soy product is TOO MUCH is debatable. It's my personal belief (with absolutely nothing to back it), that replacing meat, milk, cheese, yogurt, etc all with a single product can't be healthy. Even if soy didn't caus a single problem regardless of how much you consume, you are filling your body with too much of one product, which nobody will ever tell you is a good thing. If you choose to eat soy, just use common sense and eat it in moderation.

Eh, too much of anything is bad, even water.

Another great reason why I avoid lots of soy products.. =)

Edemame is one of my absolute favorite things to eat





How much Soy is too much? If you drink soy milk should you not have soy cheese etc?

Like others have said, too much of anything is bad, but there are alot of negative claims about soy.



I don't personally buy it, partly because some of the healthiest countries have naturally used soy as a staple in their diets for centuries, but I am wary of GMO soy. My dad recently started having reactions to soy products and has been avoiding them since, but we also started realizing that he was only reacting to GMO SOY PRODUCTS. When we gave him stuff that we were SURE was non-GMO, nothing.



processed soy products should be in more moderation though (though I've been drinking soy milk since I was an infant).

the current fashionable research on this seems to show that the oils that the email mentions, put your omega 3 & 6 ratio out of whack. it can supposedly be corrected by increasing omega 3 intake. you can do this by eating flax seeds, walnuts, hulled hemp seeds & using rice bran oil to cook with instead of sunflower or safflower. and, its bet to limit your use of those other oils.

What kind of reaction was he having?

Thanks a lot, that was very informative

xx J

He was getting a rash that frankly, I didn't personally notice but he said that he was scratching at his face alot, especially above the eyes, and he said the skin was getting raw and "bumpy". I took a look and saw what he meant though. He couldn't figure out what it was until he started claiming it would only be worse when he ate soy. We thought it was ridiculous since we ate alot of soy before and he never had such a reaction. He was avoiding ALL soy products for awhile ('cept soy sauce, but that's cuz' he said he couldn't help use it), which was problematic for our family since alot of my mom's favorite easy dishes to cook had tofu as an ingredient. After the rash started disappearing, my mom made a "meat" sauce with non GMO soy and he didn't complain about anything.



We're still not 100% sure what was going with him, but we're PRETTY sure it was GMO soy.

WOW Ninja_Wolf, I'm glad he got tot he bottom of it. They make changes to the GMO things all the time, perhaps that's why it bothered him this time and not before.

I think that Dr said two servings a day is sufficient