— Austin Trapani

So this is a this is kind of an important question around soy for a long time. It was assumed that the phytoestrogens in soy products would have an estrogenic effect in the human body. Therefore there were lots of recommend recommendations not to eat soy or soy products because it would feminize man and cause a growth of estrogen sensitive cancers in women. Just in the last two years there have been much larger longer perspective look back studies and they have found that the soy does not have those negative effects in people. It does not increase necessarily the risk of breast cancer in women. And it does not feminize men. The phytoestrogens actually have a protective effect in people. And is that in many cases soy products can be highly processed and may not actually be good for you. So, you know edamame soybeans are a whole plant food. They come packaged with all the phytochemicals in the fiber and they can be very beneficial a great source of protein and a wonderful addition to your diet, you know, unprocessed organic tofu and Tempe even better can be a nice addition to your diet as well. Especially when you soak them overnight and prepare them and they have some really good flavor. We start to cross the line when we get into all of the fake soy Foods the soy hot dogs and the soy hamburgers and the soy bacon and all these other soy based Products that come with lots of chemicals and lots of oil. Those are not good for you. They actually can cause inflammation and illness and in my practice. It was not uncommon to have lots of patience that would come to see me and they indeed would have yeah illnesses, even though they were vegan and I would take a dietary questionnaire and they were eating lots of these highly processed soy products and because of the oils and the chemicals they were developing heart disease diabetes autoimmune diseases just like the omnivorous population eating the Western diet. So, you know, the the closer you can get to the whole soybean like an edamame the better minimal processing like a Tempe which is A cultured product or a minimally processed tofu. That's also fine. But we know as we get into the more priorly processed soy products. We really need to be careful.