Soyfood's Growth in Popularity Something Seniors Should Watch

By Senior Journal

Sales of soy products in the U.S. have now risen above $2.5 billion annually, according to the industry, and some market researchers are predicting that purchase of soyfoods can be expected to increase as much as 20 percent a year, with prospects for sales in the year 2005 of as much as $6 billion.

We are not recommending soy products but some of the evidence that it can be helpful in preventing heart disease and cancer are worth watching. The following is a report by the soy industry.

Dr. Mark Messina, a leading nutritionist who has studied soy, says soyfoods have an exciting future, noting that sales have moved from the shelves of health food stores to conventional supermarkets.  Much of the growing popularity of soyfoods is traced to continuing scientific reports of findings that soy improves health and helps fight off a number of diseases, and also to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 1999 decision to permit labels on soy foods to make claims that soy intake can reduce cholesterol, helping guard against heart disease.

"There are clearly enough reasons now for health professionals to recommend soy to their patients," Dr. Messina said in an interview for Soyfoods USA, a publication of the Indiana Soybean Board.

More scientists than ever before are studying the health effects of soy, Dr. Messina said.

"I used to say that I knew not only all the research on soy, but all the researchers as well," he said.  "Now I get these great papers from people I have never heard of."

Dr. Messina noted studies indicating that as few as one or two servings of soy protein daily can be effective in reducing prostate cancer, although he said further studies are required.

"If that is true and we can move the onset of prostate cancer from 75 years of age to 80, it could have a profound effect on the health of men in this country because it is a slow-growing type of tumor," he said.

In addition to cholesterol lowering by soy products, Dr. Messina said, research has shown that soy intake can have a direct effect against heart disease by strengthening vessel walls, inhibiting cholesterol oxidation, and working against clot formation.

Soy and prostate cancer data look "very good at this time," he said.

"Soybeans and soyfoods are unique because they contain isoflavones, which much research indicates may provide a number of health benefits."