Heard anything bad about soy milk?

[spencersmommy]

Hi everyone. I am looking for info on soy milk. My DS is on regular milk, but SIL and a friend have their sons on soy and are starting to hear bad stuff about soy milk. Someone said the hormones are bad, especially for boys. Is that true? What do you know? Thanks!
Amy
Mommy to Spencer 6-4-03

[aa2mama]

Here's a link to an article about soy from Mothering magazine May/June 2004 issue:

http://www.mothering.com/10-0-0/html/10-6-0/soy-story.shtml

It sounds like the safety or dangers of soy have yet to be proven, but I'm more cautious about it now.

HTH!

[nathansmom]

The mothering article that the pp mentioned is an eye opener. Soy is okay in moderation its when you replace everything possible with soy you can run into problems.
My allergist has told me that my big soy kick in my early 20's probably helped make my peanut allergy worse. Granted I replaced all dairy products with soy and replaced all meat with soy so that may have been a factor.
I will not be feeding my child more than 8 ounces of any soy product a day. The allergist suggested the limit to help prevent allergies to my son.

[JMS]

I have read a few things linking soy products to thyroid disease (hypothyrodism specifically). I can't remember where I read it, but there isn't much evidence on it at all yet. I have hypothyrodism but lack most of the common predipositions to it. And I read a lot. I had milk allergies as an infant and my mother gave me soy formula almost exclusively (this was 30 years ago), so when I read of the possible soy link, I was extremely interested.

My endocrinologist has warned me only to consume soy in moderation b/c it can effect thyroid production if there is a pre-existing condition. The link to causing the condition itself is much less clear.

HTH.

[deborah_r]

In addition to these responses, you might want to do a search on "soy" in this forum - I remember this has been discussed a few times, so there should be a lot of information in here. There was just a thread about soy formula within the last few days.

[kijip]

Soy is a big allergy food. My soy "kick" (to borrow a previous poster's lingo) in college gave me a mild soy sensitivity. Soy and peanuts are similar so if you are allergic to one you are often allergic to the other. Soy formula so only be used as a last resort and soy milk should be used in moderation, if at all, for toddlers. This is especially true of veggie families since you don't want your child to be allergic to what later may be a big protein source!

[missliss55]

My DD was on soy milk for a couple of months as we were challening dairy (she reacted to cow milk based formula at 6 1/2 months mixed w/ her rice cereal) and we just recently switched her to lactose free whole milk as it looks like she doesn't have a milk allergy but may have a problem with lactose. Anyway...the big thing I noticed when I compared all the nutritional stuff was that soy milk has 1/2 the fat that whole cows milk has. HTH.