What is "soy"?

What is "soy"?

Susan Silberstein & Marilyn Joyce (Health and Nutrition Educator & Heath Counselor) gives expert video advice on: How can eating beans help me stay healthy? and more...

Soy, or the soya bean, is extremely valuable for many reasons. It contains wonderful essential fatty acids that our body can utilize. It's not toxic; they're healthy fats. Soy is also very high in calcium, magnesium, selenium, zinc, potassium, iron, iodine, and all those nutrients that we know are beneficial for protection of our body and production of energy. Also, soy contains a family of isoflavones which are protective against cancer. The two we most commonly hear about are genistein and daidzein. However, in research done with just genistein and daidzein in a supplement form, the results were non-conclusive. When we eat the soy, we not only get those two; it's the same as with food with the tens of thousand of nutrients inherent in the food. The same is true with soy. There are about six or seven known isoflavones in soy that work together intrinsically, so you need to get the whole food based soy products; tempeh, tofu, soy milk (which is the least beneficial I would say, but soy milk is still something you can add to your diet), miso, or edamame (the young soy bean in the pod that you often get at Japanese restaurants). Those are all extremely valuable sources of calcium and the other nutrients I just mentioned.