Soy-The Enemy?

I had a whole slew of recipes and dishes I was going to blog about.  The almost-vegan front has been slow, but enough delicious courses have come my way that a fair sized blog-post was in store.  Until my mom did some spiffy internet research that turned up the probable cause of the digestive troubles that have plagued me for the last several months.

That was a mouthful.

Did you know that soy is not a miracle food, even for vegetarians?  Too much soy intake can cause digestive discomfort.  :::DING DING DING:::  Also, too much soy before and during your period if you are female (that seems quite redundant) can cause heavy and uncomfortable periods because soy manipulates hormones.  That explains some other stuff.

To make a long story short, it is recommended that people only have soy once a day and that women limit soy before and during that time of month.  Certain people need to limit and avoid soy for other reasons, too (medication, illness, etc).

I was not aware of this and without dairy in my diet I was loading on the soy in all forms.  Tofu, tempeh, fake meats, etc.  It's all full of soy.  Just the past few days I've been trying to cut out all soy to see if I feel any better, and it's incredible to see how much soy is used in all the food products we use.  All of the dairy-free cereals in our house have some sort of soy product in the ingredients list.  The bread we bought has soybean oil. The vegan cookies my mom bought me for my birthday have soy this and soy that.  There are soy-somethings-and-anothers in so many things that cutting out soy is far more difficult than cutting out dairy and eggs.  That says something!

My mom brought up a good point--if soy manipulates hormones, should growing children even be eating it?

I won't, nor can I, give up soy all together, but I will definitely cut down on how much I eat.  I am looking for a larger variety of nuts and seeds to eat.  I bought almond milk today to try in place of soymilk (which I became slightly addicted to even if I don't drink it straight from a glass).

This whole almost-vegan thing is much harder than I thought.  Dang, soy.

This discovery has prompted a huge curiosity in me and I think I'll be doing some sort of research on soy.  Why do we rely so heavily on it?  What can it actually do to us?

Back to watching the Olympics and quietly wondering how many of these athletes are vegetarians, if any.