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Americans rarely hear anything negative about soy. Thanks to the shrewd public relations campaigns waged by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Protein Technologies International (PTI), the American Soybean Association, and other soy interests, as well as the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 1999 approval of the health claim that soy protein lowers cholesterol, soy maintains a "healthy" image.
This article is written for parents who need to know the risks of feeding soy formula to infants, or soy milk and other soy foods to growing children. It's designed for prospective mothers and fathers who need to know the links between soy foods, infertility, and birth defects. Finally, it will serve anyone considering soy as a preventive for menopausal symptoms, osteoporosis, cancer, heart disease, or other ills.
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Mothering Magazine Article: Whole Soy Story The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food
I don't buy that soy protein isolate formulas are healthy for infants. Of course, I am a strong proponant of breastfeeding and breastfed my own child, so I'm biased. In the nearly twenty years that I've been a nurse, most of which was spent in neonatal nursing, I never encouraged mothers to feed their babies soy formula. I have noticed (this is just my observation of course) that babies fed soy formula have a grayish undertone to their skin. I can look at babies when I'm out in public and tell if they're breastfed, milk formula fed or soy formula fed. Soy protein isolate has never been approved for use in the United States for use in infant formula, but because it was invented before the agency that regulates its use was formed, it was "grandfathered in".
I don't drink tons of cows milk either, but in my family, I tend toward using things like butter, milk, real sugar rather than artificial substitutes. If something requires lots of chemicals to make it edible, I don't like to feed it to my kid or the rest of the family.