The soy controversy

Since Andrew's allergic to dairy, I've been giving him rice milk and soy milk as a substitute. I continue to be worried about giving him too much soy, because of various articles that I've read.

Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food
... Most important, many respected scientists have issued warnings stating that the possible benefits of eating soy should be weighed against the proven risks. Indeed, thousands of studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive distress, immune-system breakdown, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders and infertility - even cancer and heart disease. ...

Should We Worry about Soya in our Food?
...breeding the exotic birds down under was a retirement dream. They wanted to feed their young birds the best, so they began giving the chicks a soya feed. ...The result was a catastrophic breeding year. Some of the birds were infertile; many died. Other young male birds aged prematurely or reached puberty years early. "We realised there was some sort of hormonal disruption going on but we'd eliminated other possible hormone disrupting chemicals such as pesticides from the inquiry," Fitzpatrick says. ...

... babies fed exclusively on soya formula could receive the oestrogenic equivalent, based on body weight, of five birth control pills a day. ...


Scary stuff. Just another worry to add to the list. By giving him soy milk when I got pregnant with Geoff, did I cause him permanent harm? (It was the highest-fat content non-dairy milk out there.) I did try to nurse him while I was pregnant, but there was just no milk, and he soon lost interest in nursing. Once he hit two years, we moved him onto rice milk and soy milk. Nowadays he gets maybe a cup of soy milk every day. Is that considered a serving "in moderation"?

Only time will tell us.