Soy’s health benefits debated

Determining the value of eating soy products to improve your health is a tricky thing.

In late May, a study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that menopausal women didn’t decrease their high blood pressure, as had been expected, by taking soy supplements.

However, a study published in the same publication a month later, on Chinese and American breast cancer survivors, found that women whose daily diets provided 10 milligrams or more of soy isoflavones had a 25 per cent lower chance of a recurrence of breast cancer. The second study was conducted on more than 9,000 breast cancer survivors. The first study was only on 24 menopausal women over six weeks.

Better Farming - August/September 2012