The debate around consuming soy, especially during and post-breast cancer treatment, is undeniably one of the most contentious in nutrition circles.

In this enlightening episode, we delve into the heart of the controversy surrounding this nutrient-rich food, particularly its relationship with breast cancer. Navigate through the maze of scientific research, expert viewpoints, and gain insights on selecting the best soy-based foods. Plus, discover resources to seamlessly and deliciously integrate soy into your diet, should you decide it's right for you.

Resources for Episode 32:
Studies:
The Bottom Line on Soy and Breast Cancer Risk
Soy and Food Allergies
Meta-analysis of soy intake and breast cancer risk
Today's Dietitian: Soy and Breast Cancer

Websites:
The Monsanto Papers
Whole Foods GMO Flyer

Read the full transcript:

0:01
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

0:38
Hello, welcome to the breast cancer recovery coach. I am Laura Lummer. And you're about to hear episode 32. It's so a good for me, or is it. And we're going to dig into what I think is probably one of the more confusing aspects of nutrition for breast cancer survivors, which is whether or not it's safe to eat soy, we hear a lot about that. And today, we're going to dig really into it. But before we get into that, I want to thank you all for the support you've been pouring out to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast, I want to just share a review with you really quickly that touched me the other day when I read it, because that's the whole point of the show is to reach and support other survivors. And I do read every comment that comes in whether it's Facebook, Instagram, or a podcast comment because one, I want to know that I'm reaching people and giving you the content you want to hear. And of course, I want to respond to that and make sure that you enjoy the show and get what you want to hear. So Deborah Bailey is the username. And she writes, it's been nine years since I was diagnosed with stage three B breast cancer. I survived and thrived through months of chemo, a double radical mastectomy, six weeks of radiation and a radical hysterectomy, only to realize the toughest part of all that would be recovering from it. I love that this podcast addresses the hormonal changes, prescription side effects chemo brain, etc. Thank you. And Deborah Bailey, I'm guessing that's probably your real name, too. Thank you, thank you so much for writing that. Thank you so much for listening and supporting. And congratulations, because you are a beast, that is a lot to go through. And it really says a lot to say you've been through these really torturous treatment and that the toughest part is recovering from it. And I think I know I and a lot of people listening can really identify with that. And it's something that just doesn't get talked about enough. So thank you so much for leaving that review. And to all of you who continue to leave stars and reviews, it means so much to me and makes it easier for other people who need this information to find it. So keep it coming. Thank you so much. So let's get right into today's topic. It's so good for me that and that's not a typo, that is actually a play on words. First of all, I just want to define soy. So let's talk about what soy actually is in its whole food form. Soy is illegal. And we're most familiar probably with the fully grown form of this legroom called and Emami because it's delicious. And it's a big thing all over the country. But especially in southern California, I think we have one or two sushi restaurants on every corner. And at Emami is a very popular dish. From a nutrition standpoint, soybeans are really packed with goodness, they're a complete protein. And so that means that there are 20 amino acids that a human body needs. And there are nine of those amino acids that a human body cannot make on its own, and therefore we have to get those through food. That's why they're called our essential amino acids. Now, many plants don't have all of these amino acids, or they may be very low on one or two of the amino acids. But soy beans have all nine essential amino acids in acceptable quantities, meaning that they meet the minimum requirement that you would need for serving and they're packed with other nutrients. So they've got tons of vitamin C, folate, potassium, vitamin A, and they're rich with omega three fatty acids, which are anti inflammatory acids. So in the world of fitness and nutrition, there's been this ongoing debate about plant proteins versus animal proteins and which one gives you more bang for the buck. You may see protein supplements if you make protein shakes for yourself, you'll see p protein and soy proteins and whey proteins and beef proteins. There's so many of them out there so many choices. Let's look at a comparison from the US Department of Agriculture national Nutrient Database for standard reference, while it's a big title, you can find a list there of tons of foods and their nutritional profiles. So according to this database, if you ate a three ounce serving of 95% lean ground beef and you know when you go to the grocery store, you can get 80% Lean 8595 So 95% lean ground beef, compared to three ounces of firm tofu compared to a half cup of soybeans. So when we look at the protein, the ground beef would have 25 grams of protein for that three ounce serving, the firm tofu would have 13 grams of protein for the three ounce serving, and a half cup of soybeans would have 16 and a half grams of protein for that serving, that's really good. And I say, firm tofu because it's important to note that the protein content will vary whether the tofu is soft or firm and the firm have the tofu, the higher the protein content typically. So you can see that soy beans are a good source of plant based protein. And in addition to that, the three ounce serving of lean ground beef would have 2.2 grams of saturated fat where the soybeans would have less than one gram of saturated fat. Now you can find soy in and unfermented forms such as edamame, soy nuts, soy milk, soy flour, soy protein supplements, or, and there are more, but you get the idea. You could also find it in fermented forms like miso toothpaste, soy sauce, tofu, and soy yogurt. And again, that list goes on. There are many, many other products. And you can find soy on the labels of many foods, because it's used often as a food additive to increase fiber content, add protein to foods or even increase the moisture of a certain product. A couple of the great things about soy products is that they're inexpensive, and their nutrients are easily absorbed through our intestines, meaning they have what's called a high bioavailability, meaning that we can absorb a lot of nutrients easily from this food into our body. And that rate of absorption, though, will vary depending on an individual's gut health and the type of bacteria that they have in their microbiome. So it's all these great sounding nutritional benefits. Why do you think there's so much controversy around eating soy, it sounds like a great thing to eat, right? It's low in saturated fat, it's low in calories. It's high in protein, high in fiber, high in vitamins. But there's actually two major issues. The first one is that soy is one of the eight most allergenic foods. And this is according to the food allergy and Resource Program at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. It's also one of the top five most prevalent genetically modified foods. In fact, 94% of soybean crop in the United States is genetically modified. That is a lot. So aside from my own personal opinion of genetically modified foods, which if you listen to this podcast regularly, you know, the World Health Organization or who says that genetically modified organisms could increase the risk of allergens in the foods that contain them and damage the environment. And according to the USDA soybean acres planted with herbicide tolerant seeds, and so those are genetically modified crops. That means that the seeds were modified so that they could be sprayed with the herbicide Roundup typically and still survive. So the planting of these herbicide tolerant seeds rose from 17% in 1997, to 68%, in 2001, plateauing at 94% in 2014. That is a huge increase. And before I go off on just a small tangent on GMOs, I want to tell you that Whole Foods Market has an awesome information handout. It's this infographic on GMOs, and I'll post the link to that in the show notes page for this episode on my website. So now from my little GMO tangent, if you didn't listen to episode 24, where I talked about the book whitewash, the story of a weed killer cancer and the corruption of science by Kerry Gilliam, you might want to go back and give that a listen. Because there was a huge victory on August 10. This year 2018 When Dwayne Johnson, who was a groundskeeper in California, and one of more than 4000 people who filed lawsuits against Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup for being the major contributing factor to them or to their loved ones cancer, and do Mr. Johnson won a lawsuit claiming that Monsanto's self professed safe weed killer is actually a human carcinogen, and that the company has known it all along. Well, it was promoting an integrating roundup into our food supply. In the case of Dwayne Johnson, the jury ruled that Monsanto's weed killer was it substantial contributing factor in causing his cancer, and that there was clear and convincing evidence that Monsanto's officials acted with malice or oppression in failing to adequately warn of the risks of using the service side Now, I don't want to go too deep into this issue, because I can really go off on a tangent when we start talking about the inappropriate things that are introduced into our food supply. But that's not the topic of today's show. So I'm going to post a link to the evidence that was presented at this trial if you are interested in learning more about it, but I do bring this up. Because if you eat soy products that have been genetically modified, you might want to consider the impact that they have on your health from that perspective of being a genetically modified organism. And the way that you know whether or not it's GMO with 94% of the soy crop being genetically modified, is you have to really look for that organic product. So when you're buying soy, whether it's in the form of edamame or any other product, typically on the label is a non GMO because it's so prevalent, and or if it says organic if it's organic foods, and it is not allowed to have any genetically modified organisms in it. Okay, so moving on. Thank you for tolerating my tangent. So in addition to the GMO issue, the controversy that surrounds soy is really about specific chemical compounds that are in the soybean called Eisah flavorings. These are naturally occurring chemicals that are found primarily in legumes, beans and peas. And they're known to have a lot of health benefits, including preventing heart disease, osteoporosis, and being anti inflammatory and antioxidant and therefore contributing to reducing the risk of cancer. But on the flip side of that, is the fact that I said flavorings in soy beans act as what's called phyto estrogens or plant estrogens. And this means that at a cellular level, these plant chemicals can bind to estrogen sites in our bodies. And that's where the controversy comes in. As to whether or not breast cancer survivors should be eating soy. So if you take ES E RMS, which are selective estrogen receptor modulators, which you more commonly know as tamoxifen or raloxifene, then you may be thinking, hey, wait, that's what my prescription does for me, and you would be correct. One of the actions of these drugs is to plug the entry so to speak, to the cell to keep the estrogen out and hopefully prevent a recurrence of breast cancer of disease. So one of the concerns is whether or not isoflavones interfere with the effectiveness of these drugs. And then on the other side of that is the idea that because I see flavonoids bind to these estrogen sites, they may offer protection from estrogen positive cancer recurrence. And this conflicting idea or the conflicting evidence is the problem. So let's look at what the experts really say. And maybe that'll make it easier for you to eat your garlic at Emami at your next sushi dinner. I know it does for me, especially if it's non GMO, and Mommy that is and you have to ask. Alright, so Dr. Link. He is a well published oncologist. He's an author and the founder of the breast cancer care and research fund. He's also an authority on breast cancer. And in his book, The breast cancer survival manual, and this is from the second edition that I have this information. I think it's up to the sixth edition now. But in that book, he says that phyto estrogens, and so I only have about one 100,000th of the potency of estrogen that's actually produced in our body from our ovaries. So it's very, very tiny potency. In this book, he also says that soy is an excellent protein source, and then eating up to 45 grams, which would be about 1.6 ounces, a little over one and a half ounces of soy daily can actually help reduce hot flashes, night sweats, and to help reduce the development and inhibit the growth of breast cancer. And he also states in this book that non organically grown foods should be avoided. So hashtag no GMOs. Now the American Cancer Society in a 2012 article titled The bottom line on soy and breast cancer risk, agrees with Dr. Links opinion in that the Eisah flavorings and soy have just a very small fraction of the potency of the circulating free estrogen that you typically find in a human female. This article also goes on to say that most of the soy phyto estrogen science that shows some kind of a negative impact around the consumption of soy is based on rat studies in laboratories, and that rodents don't react the same to these phytonutrients as humans, but that most large human studies have either shown there's either no association between soy consumption and breast cancer, or they've shown a positive association. And in Asian women, there's a particularly high percentage of these protective effects from eating soy foods. So they Their conclusion is that they're and this is a quote, current research finds no harmful effects to breast cancer survivors from eating soy. So they suggest that eating a moderate amount of soy foods can actually lower your risk of breast cancer, and that it provides a healthy source of protein, it may lower cholesterol and offer protection from heart disease. Again, that's because of those anti inflammatory properties. However, they do caution in this article against consuming soy in supplement form, because we know that if you're taking a supplement, it can be adulterated, and it doesn't often isn't standardized. There's other issues surrounding that. So I think it's important to say at this time that more benefits with respect to breast cancer risk are seen in women with estrogen receptor positive cancer than in the triple negative. In 2006, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute published an analysis of 18 different studies. And these are the kinds of studies that are developed by taking two groups of people and just managing one element, right, so they might have a control group and then another group that's eating a bunch of soy. And they're looking at the difference in risk factors for the people who eat soy versus the people who don't eat soy, soy in this analysis of 18 studies that were conducted over the course of the years from 1978 to 2004. And they looked at soy consumption and breast cancer risk. So in this analysis, they found that women who ate the most soy had a moderate risk of breast cancer, pre menopausal women had a little more benefit than postmenopausal women. But at the end of the day, the results were not even significant enough to claim that soy food reduced breast cancer risk. Now, that's not a bad thing. Because in some women, it did improve, and it reduced the risk. And some women it didn't have an effect at all, with respect to cancer, but that doesn't negate all of its beneficial effects in other aspects of your health. And take note that there was no finding through all of these studies that any soy foods are the consumption of the soy foods increased the risk of breast cancer, they were either neutral or they were positive.

17:15
In the July 2018, edition of today's dietitian, there's a really cool article on soy and breast cancer. And that article also says that the greatest benefits of eating soy are seen in premenopausal women versus postmenopausal women, and that eating soy foods in your pre adolescent years when the years from five years old to 11 years old, had a particularly high protective effect. This article also made a really interesting point that women who consume more soy also tend to be more physically active and to have more fruits and vegetables in their diet overall. And I think that's a really good point. Because aside from eating at Emami, most people I know who are not vegetarians, or vegans crinkled their nose at the sound of the word tofu. And not that tofu is the only soy based food and we'll go into that in a minute. But when you hear soy food, I think most people go oh, tofu. So I'll share a funny story with you about that. I made a delicious tofu based dish for a meatless Monday potluck that I was going to. And when I asked my daughter if she thought that I had made enough of this food for the amount of people that were coming, she said, Oh, Mom, just tell them there's tofu in it. And you'll have more than enough. It's true, right? Most people here Tofa. Know, thank you. So let's talk for a minute about delicious ways that you can incorporate soy into your diet, and so that you can get all the anti inflammatory, antioxidant, heart protective and potentially breast cancer protective or any cancer protective effects. So over the past, I would say 10 or 15 years, the vegan vegetarian lifestyle has become so much more popular, so much more socially accepted than it ever was before. And if you're not sure the difference, vegetarians often still will consume animal products in the forms of a egg or butter pescatarians eat fish. So vegetarians don't even have fish in their diet. And vegans don't have any animal products so they would not have any dairy, any eggs and oftentimes any honey, anything that might come from an insect or an animal or any kind of animal product that's used in the processing of something. So for instance, gelatin has animal bones are used to make gelatin. So a vegan would not eat something like that. But fortunately for us, because this lifestyle of vegetarianism and veganism has become so popular. You can really find vegan and vegetarian recipes. And I know here in California you can find those food options on many, many menus for many restaurants. Once you go to, and that's a benefit to us because there's so many more delicious plant based foods, recipes and dishes that everyone else can access. And I'm often asked, well, I don't even know what's your I don't want to be a vegetarian one, which is perfectly acceptable, or I wouldn't even know what to eat what vegetarians eat. And then I say to them, what do you eat, you don't usually sit down to just a slab of meat on your plate, right? You have side dishes. So you can think about increasing that intake of soy and healthier foods. By considering well you don't have to just be a vegetarian or a vegan, but you can find these dishes you can find these recipes, you can prepare them and if you want to have chicken or fish or meat on the side, then you do that too. So you can find vegan and vegetarian recipe categories on websites like eating well, clean eating, bon appetit, pretty much any website you go to actually, and there are wonderful dedicated vegetarian and vegan sites like Meatless Monday vegetarian times, try veg, which is try veg, try v g.com. And that actually gives you a downloadable Starter Guide to vegan eating. So from these resources, you can find a lot of different ways to prepare soy based foods. And because of this plant based eating revolution, there are also lots of meat alternatives. So you can find soy hotdogs, hamburgers, bacon sausage, you can get soy cheeses, mayonnaise, yogurt, coffee creamers, I mean there's a very extensive list of these products. So don't limit yourself to thinking that you have to eat tofu to get more soy into your life. But do make every effort to get the non GMO organic soy products. So you get all those health benefits without adding those potential allergens and toxins into your diet and into your beautiful healthy body. So as always, I will list the resources that I talked about on this episode's show notes page, which you can find on my website, Laura lummer.com, under podcasts. And thank you again for listening to the show and for your continued support. I hope you have a wonderful day. And if you do decide to try some new soy product or a new soy recipe, or if you have an awesome soy recipe that you'd like to share, come on over to Facebook, find me at Laura Lummer or an Instagram breast cancer recovery coach and share your ideas and your resources and your recipes with our thriving community of survivors. All right. Thanks for listening and I'll try to get into weeks. Until then remember, let your lifestyle be medicine.

22:36
You've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures Give it all you know has you been waiting

23:06
this is your