Soy: A Return

Now that I've explained what soy contains and how it hurts your body, you may be wondering why it's being put into much of our food. The answer is simple: cold, hard cash. Soybeans are easily one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest commodity from which a cooking oil can be derived. When this oil is extracted from the soybean, a byproduct is produced called soy lecithin. While a lot of food contains actual soybean oil, or fermented soy products like soy sauce, many of our processed foods only contain this soy lecithin.

 LECITHINS

Lecithin is a generic term used to describe any fatty acids or substances found within plant or animal tissue. Lecithins contain a variety of chemical terms, including choline, glycolipids, and glycerol. 

Choline (no, not chlorine, I didn't make a typo) is a nutrient necessary throughout life to keep the body healthy. It is used in the construction of cell walls; which, as you can imagine, are pretty important. 

 Glycolipids simply provide energy. They often have carbohydrates attached. Carbohydrates are another energy source. 

Glycerol forms the backbone of triglycerids and can be used as a sweetener. This is why the fat is the sweetest part of a steak, it's high in glycerol.

Triglycerids have two functions; they transport fatty molecules to your cells and serve as an energy source in their own right. In fact, they contain twice as much energy as carbohydrates or proteins. 

All these substances are necessary for life, so what's the big problem?  There is no issue here, until you consider all the phytoestrogens and trypsin inhibitors present in soy to begin with. Also, as I mentioned before, soy lecithin is a byproduct of the process used to extract oil from soybeans. But exactly what is a byproduct? A byproduct is the mysterious sludge in the bottom of the tank that nobody knows what to do with; at least, until someone figured out that it helped to hold food together and bread to rise. Now it's used as an additive in everything from candy bars to muffins and much of what lies in between. Unfortunately for consumers, byproducts tend to not only contain good stuff, but bad as well. Soy lecithin is contaminated with solvents and pesticides left over from the oil extracting process. To make matters worse, soy lecithin is bleached to avoid discoloring in the foods we eat. 

So why is this bad? Well, you wouldn't down a mixture of paint thinner, Raid, and bleach, would you? Essentially the same thing, just taken at lower doses and disguised with other flavors.