Is Organic Soymilk Healthy?

I wonder what the healthy, long living, beautifully complected Asian community thinks of soy products and soy milk. All my Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai friends eat tons of soy products....soy based milks, soy sauce, tofu - daily in their diets.

I have not kept up with the 'soy' hormone controversy, but decided to ignore it when it became the new diet culprit. Just like we ignored the 'low fat and non-fat' craze, and whatever the new superfood is....except that we already eat a fare amount of seaweed, so were ahead of the diet craze on that super food...

Honestly, from one health nut to another - everything in moderation. And I mean everything.

I'd be careful - moderation in all things.
I like a little tofu from time to time but I'm already hypothyroid and too much soy can make that worse.

http://authoritynutrition.com/is-soy-bad-for-you-or-good/

if you must ingest soy juice (ew ew ew), organic is better than non-organic for sure. soy is a sponge for pesticides.
khairete
S. (who can put away some edamame)

I don't know if it's healthy or not, but I do know that soy milk tastes nasty.
I prefer to get my milk from beasts with udders.

The hormone issue was set to rest a long time ago. The medical journal that published the study retracted it (with apologies) when the results could not be replicated, and multiple other studies have shown that soy is beneficial. In particular, the lunasin peptide is highly beneficial in reducing inflammation and repairing damage to the epigenome which controls cell function. There are still people quoting the "bad soy" idea but there are no scientists of any high repute who are even debating it at all. Go to pubmed.gov, for example, and search under lunasin/cancer and see how many studies there are since 1998. And that doesn't even cover the cholesterol-reducing effects.

Soy has been nature's protein for 5000 years, and countries with high soy diets have lower rates of breast cancer and lower rates of recurrence in those patients who do get it. (Major studies were done to this effect about 8 years ago or so.) Only when these countries start processing the soy the way we do in the US, including a reduction of lunasin or poor techniques to extract it, do their cancer rates start to increase.

There are few doctors who aren't up on this, and may still say "stay away from it" and there are average citizens who cling to the notion that it's bad for you, just as we cling to the idea of "8 glasses of water a day" even though that was never, ever proven and is just a made up number that's been repeated so often, people think it's true. Same for the idea that it gives men enlarged breasts. No it doesn't. Put it in the urban legend category.

The issue with soy milk is not whether it's organic - it might be grown organically, but you don't know if it's from genetically modified seeds which can reduce the amount of lunasin in it. (And there are terrible sources of poor quality lunasin, just as there are poor sources of every other vegetable, fruit or other food product.) You also don't know how it was processed - and that's the killer with soy. Alcohol, hexane, etc. - no matter that it was grown organically, the processing is not well regulated.

I eat plenty of soy from a non-GMO source and with a very high lunasin content, and I've been in many training sessions with the epigeneticist who discovered it, as well as other scientists. My breast health has improved (says my doctor, who is very happy after all my abnormal mammograms in the past) and my overall immune system is strengthened. Same for tens of thousands of other people.

The only other question about soy milk is how much soy is in there - how many grams? And is it in an absorbable form which allows the various nutrients to survive digestion - that's a big one.

So it's not going to have anything bad in it from a hormonal standpoint. Whether it meets your nutritional needs is something else again. But I don't see any reason to avoid it if you can verify the source of the soy and the processing involved.

Yes, it's healthy. It's what we use on a regular basis.

Soy is perfectly fine in moderation. I get very tired of hearing all about how bad it is for you. In truth, it is the most nutrient-rich, best alternative to cow's milk.

My son is 8 years old and has been drinking soy milk since he was a year old. He hasn't had any negative effects from it whatsoever. He is healthy and strong, very smart and a good athlete.

We buy the organic soy milk non-refrigerated from Costco.

I just don't get the point of milk, beyond being a cooking/baking ingredient, and maybe on cereal and in coffee, who actually drinks this stuff? The only people who NEED milk are babies, and they either ingest human milk or formula.
Is this a lactose intolerance thing? Like you can't have cheese, butter or ice cream? Now THAT I understand, I love cheese and butter and ice cream and would hate to give those up unless I had to!

Organic soy is healthier than non-organic soy of course because the soybeans are farmed organically. Too much soy is supposedly not good and can supposedly affect hormone levels (mixed information there though).

I would assume when people replace every animal product at every meal and snack with soy products artificially processed and manufactured specifically to simulate meat and cheese (with scary ingredient labels a mile long) like newbie vegetarians do, that could be too much soy. Although, really, many unhealthy diets are worse than ones with too much soy, and it's the lack of goodness from the over-processing of those "foods" not so much the soy that's the problem.

Asian cultures tend to use a little tofu in some dishes, some edamame, some soy sauce, some meat, tons of veggies, and they have the healthiest diets on the planet. Americans tend to do everything in excess and think they need gallons of sweetened vanilla soymilk with other weird ingredients in it to guzzle down instead of milk or water.

So read your label. Even some organic soy milk brands have some added ingredients they shouldn't. But if it's a nice, pure, unsweetened, organic soy milk, then sure, drink it in moderation.

Soy is not good but we do ingest it in moderate amounts like when we go out for hibachi food. If you need non dairy alternatives I suggest coconut and almond milk. We have some dairy issues so I keep these on hand for baking. I agree that no one really needs,to drink milk. I always hated milk.

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Soy is not good but we do ingest it in moderate amounts like when we go out for hibachi food. If you need non dairy alternatives I suggest coconut and almond milk. We have some dairy issues so I keep these on hand for baking. I agree that no one really needs,to drink milk. I always hated milk.