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Somewhere I saw a study which pointed out that asians don't eat whole soy beans, usually soy sauce or tofu. I'm not sure if there was a problem with tofu, but I stopped shopping for it. Here's the other hazard:
Researchers fed female rats soy flour made from Roundup Ready soybeans, a
type of GM soybean engineered to resist applications of the Monsanto company
's toxic Roundup weed killer. Two weeks after starting their GM diet, the
rats were permitted to conceive. They continued to eat GM soy flour until
these pregnancies were brought to term and they had finished nursing their
newborns.
Scientists report that 55.6% of the rats born to mothers eating the Roundup
Ready flour died within three weeks compared to just 9% in the control
group. In addition, the offspring in the GM-fed group suffered from low
weights and were significantly smaller than those in the control group. Some
36% weighed less than 20 grams two weeks after birth while only 6.7% of the
control mice were similarly stunted.
In presenting the study at a recent conference of the American Academy of
Environmental Medicine in Tucson, Arizona, that organization's board noted
that the study had not yet been peer reviewed and that the Russian
scientists had not described their methodology in sufficient detail,
important factors that mean the results remain open to scientific question.
Still, they said, the findings were sufficiently alarming to compel the
board to urge the National Institutes of Health to immediately replicate the
research. One reason for the Academy's concern is the increasing prevalence
of Roundup Ready soybeans in the marketplace. Since being introduced in
1996, acreage planted with Roundup Ready soybeans has grown from one million
acres to over 78 million.
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