The July-August Utne Reader publishes four articles on soy, attacking the hot subject from different angles. Starhawk, aaugh, I don’t want to shake your faith or heavy soy habits, but, really, take another look. None of these articles make me want to eat much more than my trusty bowls of miso. Soy milk manufacturers must be calling emergency staff meetings, the assessments of it are so negative! Here’s the lead piece by Mary Vance, reprinted from Terrain. And here’s an excerpt from Vance’s interview on soy with clinical nutritionist Kaayla Daniel:

What health problems do you see in your practice that can be traced back to overconsumption of soy?
I work mostly with midlife women, and they’re likely to eat a lot of soy and drink a lot of soy milk. They’re taking soy isoflavone supplements because they’ve heard that it’s going to help them through menopause. A lot of these women are very intelligent and educated, and, unfortunately, they get this idea that if a little of something might be good, then they should do a lot of it. They start gaining weight, feeling fatigued; they get lethargic and depressed, and when they go to a regular doctor, they’re told “Well, what do you expect, you’re getting old,” and that this is typical of menopause. In fact, the symptoms are almost entirely coming from that change in their diet, which had to do with soy.