Raena Morgan: Hi, I’m Raena Morgan with iHealthTube, visiting with Dr. Sherrill
Sellman.We’re talking about good nutrition. And Dr. Sellman—soy—it’s
been a nutritional star in the health food world, but there’s been some
controversy about it lately. Could you discuss that with us?
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: I’d love to. You know, soy has been promoted, has been marketed to be a
nutritional star. We’ve heard so much about it. It took about 50 years to
convince the American public that soy should be eaten. But there’s
another side to soy that we really need to understand. I used to eat a lot of
soy as a vegetarian, which I am no longer, I’m a recovering vegetarian. I
would eat tons of soy and I thought it was a really good food. So, let me
just dispel some of those myths and give you some of the facts. First of all,
the Asians are not healthier people because they eat soy. Soy is not a
staple in Asia and I have actually lived in Asia, Southeast Asia, and I can
tell you, for a fact, it is not. The Chinese eat an average of two teaspoons a
day of soy, and the Japanese may do a couple of tablespoons a day.
Raena Morgan: That’s not very much.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: No, it’s not very much. And the kind of soy these people eat is basically in
a fermented form. So, soy came from Asia. It was never considered a very
nutritional food. It was when they learned to ferment it, in the form of
miso by the Japanese, particularly, and in another form called naso, that
they were able to make it digestible. Up until that point it was only used in
times of famine when they had nothing else; they would never eat the
soybeans. It was used more to put nitrogen into the soil. So, the best way,
and the only way I really recommend people eat soy is in fermented form.
The reason why we have a problem with soy is because there are some
health concerns [about the] effects of eating soy. Right now soy flour is
just in about every bread you buy.
Raena Morgan: That’s right.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: You have soy milk, you have soy nuts, you have soy oil, [it’s] just
proliferated. But the fact of the matter is, soy is a very dangerous food, it’s
one of the top most allergic foods you can eat. We know wheat is allergic,
we know milk—these are highly allergic foods, [regarding] food allergies.
Soy is cross reactive with wheat; it’s extremely allergic, it will create a
range of inflammatory conditions. And we’re a very allergic society. You
know, people have lots of allergy issues, and soy contributes to that. The
other thing about soy is that it interferes with thyroid function. Actually
it’s called goitergenic, the term; it actually will block the action of your
thyroid. Several tablespoons a day [are] enough soy to actually have an
effect on your thyroid, and we’re a society that also has a tremendous
amount of issues with thyroid problems.
Raena Morgan: Right.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: So, one of the known effects of soy is that its goitergenic and it will
compromise thyroid function leading to hypothyroidism….It increases the
need for the body’s vitamin D, you have to take more vitamin D. It’s a
very inefficient form of B12; it will not supply the body’s requirement for
B12. It also is a trypsin inhibitor; it will block the absorption of protein
and interfere with the function of the pancreas. And aside from that, it also
blocks the absorption of key minerals such as calcium, magnesium and
zinc and iron. So it's (soy) a terrible food to give to children. And one
other thing I have to say is it’s very estrogenic. Now, the popular form of
some infant formulas and a lot of people are using soy because their
babies are allergic to milk, or whatever, but, in actual fact, it’s a very poor,
it’s a very bad form of formula for children. One of the reasons why? If a
baby is fed solely on soy formula it’s like giving that baby 5 birth control
pills a day, [that’s] the amount of estrogen. You get 13,000 to 22,000
times more estrogen in, circulating in a baby’s body, then if they were
taking a milk formula. And that can lead to conditions later in life, such as,
this growing problem of early puberty that we have—1 out of 6 8 year
olds going through puberty. Feeding children, little girls and little boys,
who also have reproductive abnormalities from doing the soy infant
formula, can create a whole host of problems that can be with these
children for the rest of their lives. So, if you’re going to do soy, it’s
nutritious as a fermented food. Tofu, by the way, is not fermented. We’re
talking tempeh, we’re talking miso and we’re talking naso, and any other
form of soy be very judicious of its use. Only use a small amount. I
occasionally use a little soy milk in my coffee because I don’t like milk,
but that’s about it.
And there are much more nutritious foods out there that will not have the
health effects, the detrimental effects, and can really provide us with our
nutritional needs much better. And there’s one more thing I want to add
about soy. Most of the soy you get, unless it says organic, is a GMO—
genetically, modified organism, which means it has been tampered with.
More and more research is coming out showing that GMO foods have
serious debilitating effects to our health. So, you do not want to be eating
GMO foods, and unless it says organic soy, it is probably GMO. And also
the major grower and distributor of soy tried to get the government to give
it a GRAS labeling, generally recognized as safe, but when all the
literature and science was presented, that request was denied. So, it is not
recognized as a generally recognized as safe product, which should be
telling us something quite important about the effects of soy on our health.
Raena Morgan: Well, thank you for telling us the other side of the soy story. Thank you
very much Dr. Sellman.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: You’re welcome
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