Once A Savior, Soy Becomes A Food Sensitivity Bad Guy.

For a while soy seemed like the answer for those who struggled with dairy and dairy products.

Finally a solution! Go soy.

Sadly over the last couple of years soy joins the ranks with other foods causing sensitivity problems. Hard to know the exact reasons, but the way soy gets grown and processed (and its heavy use in many products) are likely culprits in soy becoming a source of serious allergic reaction in people.

The discussion of sensitivity to the proteins in soy must begin with a curious issue: the laboratory testing for soy allergies can be completely negative yet your health improves when you eliminate soy from your diet. This poses a dilemma when we propose stopping soy to our clients, however sometimes you just have to try it.

Electrodermal screening, galvanic skin response testing, muscle testing and even old fashioned intuition can suggest a possible problem with soy. We’ve found over the years that when someone has a real sensitivity to a particular food, they know it on some level. If you believe that soy is a problem, eliminating soy 100% from your diet for 4 to 6 weeks is worth a try.

Eliminating soy can be difficult, especially if you eat processed foods. When you start reading labels, it seems soy is included in most processed foods. So read labels diligently and take the time to do so when shopping. Fortunately, soy allergies are now so common that food manufacturers are required to state their product contains soy on the label.

This discussion about reaction to soy in the diet is made even more complex because of the current source of soy. Most soy used in food in this country comes from genetically modified (recombinant) seed stock. When this kind of modification occurs it becomes harder to know how those modifications alter the food on a core level. This is why we can see someone allergic to a modified version of a food and not allergic to an organic source of that same food. We see this with some European wheat, which draws from older strains of the grain not modified the ways modern strains are.

Practitioners who pay close attention to the diets of their clients and issues of food sensitivities, notice more marked increase in the number of people demonstrating reactions to soy the past few years. If you still rely on soy, an option can be to use only organic soy products. I offer this because genetically modified organisms (GMOs) cannot be labeled as organic, so an organic product should be safer.

Food sensitivity to soy is not as common as the sensitivities we see to wheat and the proteins in cow dairy. Still, real sensitivities to soy exist and trying a trial of elimination of all soy is recommended as you explore your individual sensitivities to foods.

Have a soy allergy? Or think you do? Let us know your experience in the comments below.

To Your Health.