Last updated on August 23rd, 2011
In my last post, I speculated about my sensitivity to wheat, noting that having virtually eliminated wheat from my diet, I have also eliminated chronic digestion problems that seemed to be getting worse as I aged.
It was easy to finger wheat, which has a growing reputation as a bad dietary player for many people. Both the gluten and lectin families of proteins in wheat have been connected to health problems that fall under the heading of “inflammation.”
In the post, I considered a couple of other suspects, dairy and beans (legumes), but the details of my own dietary history, before and after carbs, pointed most strongly at wheat.
I still feel that way, but I now have an additional suspect to consider: soy.
OK, soybeans are legumes, but they aren’t the kind of legumes I was thinking of yesterday. I had lentils and navy beans in mind: the beans I ate in soups. (Anita’s bean soups are the best. They aren’t the reason I married her. Just a nice bonus.)
I was put onto soybeans by a book I picked up at Border’s going out of business sale: The Inflammation Syndrome: Your Nutrition Plan for Great Health, Weight Loss, and Pain-Free Living by Jack Challem (Wiley, 2010). Step #10 in Challem’s 14-step dietary program for reducing or reversing inflammation is “Identify and avoid food allergens.”
Given my frame of mind, when I cracked open the book today, #10 was the first step I read. Challem says people can be sensitive to any food, but three common sensitivities are to wheat, dairy and soy.
Like many Americans, I rarely sought out soy-based products. Soy sauce would be the exception. But like most Americans, I’ve been consuming a lot more soy than I knew.
Some people deliberately avoid soy. My wife is one. Anita avoids soy because of its “phytoestrogens,” which have been associated with the type of breast cancer that runs in her family.
But I never had a reason to be suspicious of soy. In fact, when I first started eating low-carb, I thought soybeans would be my friend. They are low in carbs and high in protein — what more could you want? It’s a freakin’ health food! One of the fist specialty low-carb foods that I bought was soy milk. I didn’t like it much, but probably could have gotten used to it.
Then I started reading about problems with the way soy is prepared and used in modern western diets. (See, for example, Mary G. Enig’s Soy: Cinderella’s Dark Side.) Basically, it is used way too much and not in the fermented forms traditional in eastern diets. Like wheat, soybeans in their natural state contain anti-nutrients that are not destroyed by ordinary cooking.
So I never bought any more soy milk, and I also started reading food labels more closely.
In the U.S., soy provides a cheap oil and cheap protein, and food manufacturers put it in everything from mayonnaise and salad dressings to chocolate and potato chips. When you read food labels, you see soy everywhere. Sometimes it is disguised by a phrase such as “and other vegetable oils.” Maybe that isn’t soy oil, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Luckily, I was already giving up most packaged foods, and all high-carb junk food. It’s a natural part of switching to a low-carb, whole foods way of eating. But soy is in some products I still consume, such as bottled salad dressing and mayonnaise.
I figure those convenience products and an occasional dash of soy sauce are plenty of soy for me. (And I’m working on limiting the convenience products more and more.)
By ditching most packaged foods, I ditched a lot of soy. That action may or may not have been a factor in my digestive tract improvements, but I’m not drinking more soy milk to find out.
As far as that goes, I’m not drinking cow’s milk, either. Some cream in my coffee and an ounce or two of cheese are usually all the dairy I eat in a day.
My intestines and I are doing fine on a no-wheat, limited-dairy, limited-soy, low-carb diet. We’ll stick with that.
Jim,
I’m glad you’re writing on soy because I’ve also read that it is quite a problem. In Primal Body Primal Mind, Nora Gedgaudas warns that soy milk baby formula should never be used unless there’s no alternative because the soy is acting like estrogen – and if it’s a boy, slows down sexual maturity and for a girl, accelerates it. I looked it up and sure enough one of the pediatrics association warned about it.
I’m not sure what alternatives there are to soy formula if the mom can’t breast feed and her baby can’t tolerate cow’s milk/ lactose. But I’d look into it if I were a prospective parent today.
I recently learned I was allergic to soy. My doc suggested it for the phytoestrogens and I thought it would be a great way to get more protein in my diet while abvoiding extra carbs. I found lots of tasty products and loved the chocolate soy milk! Right after I started experimenting with tofu, I started having such severe abdominal pain my doc ordered a bunch of gallbladder tests. When everything was normal, we started examining my diet. I eliminated the soy and the pain disappeared! Now I can eat a dab of soy sauce but any product that contains soy in the warning list at the end of ingredients is a big problem. Since soy is in everything, I’m reading labels carefully these days while I await the results of my food-allergy test. I really hope soy is the only food I’m allergic to!
I also quit drinking soy milk and switched to almond, am now making my own salad dressings with olive oil, etc. I am still using mayo however, usually Hellman’s, and soy oil is the first ingredient!
Did some checking and notice that Kraft makes a mayo with part olive oil and part soy oil, but the label does not indicate that it is gluten free. Hellman now has a version with olive oil as well, and their label does specify that it is gluten free. Geez, can’t these guys just make a version with just olive oil and leave the soy out of the recipe altogether?
I could also just make my own mayonnaise I suppose, but the downside is the shelf life. Linda has a recipe on her site and I found others as well. Unfortunately I just don’t use mayo often enough to whip up a batch. It would spoil before I used it all.
Decisions, decisions…………………………………..
I made some salads for a picnic concert the other night. The amount of mayo needed warranted being able to make a batch of homemade, since the entire batch would be used in the salads. WOW, what a difference in the taste. I made it with half coconut oil and half olive oil. The salads came out amazing. the concert was pretty great too!
I am also working at cutting soy out of our diet. I hope that since our processed food consumption is down so far that so is our soy.
Jim to help you with your dairy-free…look for kosher items that say “Parve” that means there is no dairy in the food