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Spreading the truth about soy.

Soy Online Service is a small group of private citizens with a mission to inform the public of the truth about soy.  We have no membership as such and are not sponsored by industry or any other group, in fact our research is funded out of our own pockets.  We do not seek the destruction of the soy industry or to stop people eating soy.  We have no desire to stop you being Vegan or to cause you to switch to dairy products.  Rather we seek to expose the deceit of the major soy companies and to uncover the truth about soy products.  We do this by providing you with factual material that you can read for yourself, so that in the future you can make an informed choice about what you eat.

You are probably well acquainted with all the wonderful things soy is purported to do for you.  That's because the multi-million dollar soy marketing machine has done its job on you.   But are you aware that there is a darker side of soy?

For instance did you know that soy contains several types of natural toxins?  The soy industry has known about them for years.  If you were to ask the soy industry about the soy toxins you'd most likely be told that:

When pressed with evidence that all soy products still contain these toxins you'll likely be informed that:

And when you ask about the scores of research papers that do show evidence of harm the answer will probably be something like:

The health claims of the soy industry have one purpose and one purpose alone - to sell more soy!  That's why you'll only hear about the benefits of soy from the industry, but we think all consumers deserve the right to make an informed choice about what they are eating and feeding to their children, their household pets and their livestock.

We have found a wealth of evidence that the soy toxins cause both acute and chronic effects in both animals and humans.  The industry refers to the soy toxins as 'anti-nutrients' but, in fact, they are classed with environmental toxins and they are present in every food product that contains soy.

As often occurs in cases of environmental poisoning, Soy Online Services first became aware of the toxicity of soy because of its effects on animals.  The harm that soy causes animals has been known for decades, but this fact currently appears to be ignored by manufacturers of animal feeds who are ever eager to utilise cheap sources of protein in their products.

The use of new generation bird feeds that contained soy coincided with thousands of bird deaths and disorders.  These effects were widespread and were reported by many of New Zealand's leading parrot breeders.

Among the effects seen by these bird breeders were:

The most startling was the latter.  For example, male Crimson Rosellas (large Australian parrots) are green when juveniles and red when adults (as shown in Figure 1).   In the wild the adult plumage develops from about the age of 12 to 18 months.   But bird breeders were finding that their birds 'coloured-up' after just a few months, a fact that wasn't missed by one bird food manufacturer who actually used this fact in promotional material (Figure 2).

Fig 1: Juvenile (green) and adult (red) Crimson Rosellas

Fig 2: Juvenile Crimson Rosella with adult plumage

All very nice to have baby birds with adult plumage you might think.   The problem was that the growth acceleration experienced by the birds also meant they their lifespan was often drastically shortened.

Bird breeders noted that a common factor in the diets of affected parrots was soy protein.  But could the effects seen in parrots be explained by the presence of the soy toxins?

Soy is high in phytate, which reduces mineral bioavailability.  Upset the delicate mineral balance in a parrot's diets and bone and beak disorders are the result.

Soybeans contain high levels of phytoestrogens.  Although investigators didn't know it at the time, the compounds are powerful immune-suppressants, potent goitrogens (the goitrogenic effects of soy products are even discussed at length in the text 'Diseases of Caged Birds' - TFH Publications, 1988) and as the name suggests, able to elicit estrogenic effects.  Strong candidates then as the cause of the infertility and premature maturation. 

Early investigators were familiar with the writings of Rachel Carson who penned 'our fate is connected with the animals'.  If the fate of birds fed soy protein was growth disorders, thyroid problems, infertility and tumour growth, they asked 'what about infants fed soy formulas and adults consuming large amounts of soy?'

And so began our investigation.

We know the soy industry hasn't enjoyed what we've found, but you deserve to know what we have learnt about the effects of phytoestrogens and other soy toxins.