The Trouble With Soy

[ramseyb]

Does anyone besides me also have trouble with soy products? These go right through me and cause bloating, gas, pain and diarrhea. This is frustrating in finding gluten free products because so many of them contain soy. What's a girl to do?

[jmengert]

Yeah, unfortunately I have the same symptoms when I ingest soy. And it's in everything! Even tuna fish that is supposed packed in spring water has soy in it. The bad thing is, too, that a lot of premade gluten-free products are made with soy flour or soy protein. And chocolate, too! Woe is me! I'm getting used to it, though--it just means even more cooking from scratch. I make a lot of baked goods using Pamela's Baking and Pancake mix now because there's no soy in some of her stuff--'Cause You're Special also has several mixes without soy that are great, if you're looking for good dessert items, which is where I mostly see soy in products.

[burdee]

I also learned I have soy intolerance after I substituted soy milk, etc. for dairy products after my Enterolab tests indicated casein (dairy) intolerance. My soy contamination symptoms are similar to my gluten symptoms (bits of broken glass in my intestines, bloating and gas) and to my dairy symptoms (cramping pain like menstrual cramps), but only milder. I encourage anybody with soy intolerance to SCRUPULOUSLY read labels. Anything that's dairy and gluten free usually has soy. Many gluten free products have soy. YUP, fish canned in 'water pack' often includes soy in that water.

I have a great cookbook by Connie Saros entitled "Special Foods for Special Diets" which describes how to make gluten/dairy/soy (or whatever intolerance you have) substitutions for all her recipes. She also lists all the words which mean 'soy' ingredients.

After over a year w/o chocolate I FINALLY found a gluten/dairy/soy free chocolate bar made by Elite (a company in Isreal) especially for passover. The kosher department manager of a local grocer special ordered a case for me. They have a sugar free version and the bittersweet (sugar sweetened) version which I use because I can't tolerate any sorbitol type of sweetner. EnjoyLifeFoods makes gluten-free/df/sf chocolate chips and cookes. Ener-G Foods also makes chocolate chips (available October-May) and chocolate chip cookies.

Soy intolerance in addition to gluten and dairy intolerance is a challenge, but abstaining sure beats those painful contamination reaction episodes!!!

BURDEE

[jenvan]

I can have issues with soy too...but there are some good brands out there that are soy free:

Namaste: Open Original Shared Link

Enjoylife: www.enjoylife.com

These are two off the top of my head...but there are more.

[Merika]

oh yeah! soy is a HUGE problem for us - especially my son age 3 who gets major behavioral problems from it as well.

There are lots of soy free and gluten-free products out there, including chocolate Whole Foods 365 brand sells a decent chocolate bar. Look out for my post on Pamela's chocolate cake mix, though, they claim to be soy free, but I'm just not sure it is.

IMO, soy is harder to avoid than gluten. Having been gluten-free for 1 1/2 yrs now, and in the past year adding a bunch of other things I've found I'm allergic to that I now avoid - I can say that if my only dietary restriction were gluten, almost the whole world of food would be open to me, lol. It would be sooo easy by comparison to what I do now.

Soy goes under other names as well, you may want to search the archives here, I could try to list them all , but i ususally forget a few. One of these days, maybe soon, I am going to post them all on my website for easy referral.

Merika

[tarnalberry]

I seem to have gas problems from too much soy. I can have a little bit, and not every day, but too much makes me gassy. :-(

[kabowman]

EnjoyLife foods has a dairy free/soy free chocolate chip that can be added to (I forget the name of the brand) brownie mix that tastes just like normal if you don't mind spending a small fortune that I have no problems with and I am very sensitve to soy. I even found it in one of my hand lotions and had to give that up.

Watch out for soups - only homemade now with only homemade broths.

[mandigirl1]

I also learned I have soy intolerance after I substituted soy milk, etc. for dairy products after my Enterolab tests indicated casein (dairy) intolerance.  My soy contamination symptoms are similar to my gluten symptoms (bits of broken glass in my intestines, bloating and gas) and to my dairy symptoms (cramping pain like menstrual cramps), but only milder.  I encourage anybody with soy intolerance to SCRUPULOUSLY read labels.  Anything that's dairy and gluten free usually has soy.  Many gluten free products have soy.  YUP, fish canned in 'water pack' often includes soy in that water. 

I have a great cookbook by Connie Saros entitled "Special Foods for Special Diets" which describes how to make gluten/dairy/soy (or whatever intolerance you have) substitutions for all her recipes.  She also lists all the words which mean 'soy' ingredients.

After over a year w/o chocolate I FINALLY found a gluten/dairy/soy free chocolate bar made by Elite (a company in Isreal) especially for passover.  The kosher department manager of a local grocer special ordered a case for me.  They have a sugar free version and the bittersweet (sugar sweetened) version which I use because I can't tolerate any sorbitol type of sweetner.  EnjoyLifeFoods makes gluten-free/df/sf chocolate chips and cookes.  Ener-G Foods also makes chocolate chips (available October-May) and chocolate chip cookies. 

Soy intolerance in addition to gluten and dairy intolerance is a challenge, but abstaining sure beats those painful contamination reaction episodes!!!

BURDEE

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Could you please send me information on how to buy those chocolate bars from Isreal (Elite). Do they make any other products that are gluten-free???? I love finding new products....it makes it so much easier to deal with celiac disease.....I hate getting bored or being addicted to one type of food....

Thanks!!!!

[burdee]

Hi Mandigirl:

I'm not sure if you wanted a gluten/soy/dairy free chocolate or just a different kind of chocolate. If soy doesn't bother you, Tropical Source makes a gluten/dairy free chocolate bar in many different flavors (w/ almonds or hazelnuts or raspberry or mint or dark expresso), but all contain soy lecithin. If you really need a gluten/soy/dairy free chocolate BAR (rather than chips which you can get from Enjoylifefoods and Ener-G Foods), Elite is the only gluten-free/sf/df brand I have found, but it wasn't easy. The kosher dept. of my local Quality Foods Company (OFC) also Kroeger carried them just during passover. However another celiac friend found them, liked them and recommended them to me when she heard I needed gluten-free/sf/df chocolate. So we had to ask the kosher manager to special order them again.

Here's more info: The front label is dark brown with a picture of a cow in an off white oval and says: Elite Bittersweet Chocolate Net wt. 1.5 oz. Ingredients: sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, emulsifier (PGPR) artificial flavor (vanillin) salt, chocolate contains: cocoa solids 444% mini. KOSHER PARVE FOR PASSOVER, KITNIOT FREE LECITHIN FREE UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF NAZARETH-ILLIT RABBINATE. Produced by Elite Confectionery LTD. Nazareth-Illit, Israel. The UPC code on that variety is 0 77245 10269 1. Elite makes other varieties, including a sugar free (mannitol sweetened) and regular milk chocolate (includes dairy), as well as one which contains soy lecithin. So you probably need to provide that UPC code when you order it from a local grocer.

BURDEE

[cdford]

According to my doc, soy in celiac disease patients can also be a contributing factor in neurological symptoms. I know mine get much worse when I ingest soy.

[kvogt]

Soy causes me brain fog to the extreme. Can form sentences.

[Linda Macomber]

Does anyone besides me also have trouble with soy products? These go right through me and cause bloating, gas, pain and diarrhea. This is frustrating in finding gluten free products because so many of them contain soy. What's a girl to do?

Yes, I have the exact same symptoms.

[lonewolf]

I can't tolerate soy at all, except for soy lecithin. I avoided even it for several years, but then got information from the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network that many people who are allergic to soy can tolerate the lecithin. I don't even try soybean oil, even though it is supposedly safe too. There's a lot of evidence/research that shows that soy isn't really good for anyone, unless it's fermented, which breaks down something called phytates, which is what can cause symptoms like you've described.

Liz

[Jen H]

Hey guys,

How did you discover you are intolerant to soy? Was it allergy testing or trial and error? Also, what other symptoms do you get?

[cornbread]

www.enterolab.com now do stool tests for soy (and eggs and yeast). I figured out I had a soy problem just from symptoms after eating it, and this was confirmed with a positive enterolab test. Soy (and yeast) produce elevevated IgA antibodies in me, just the same as gluten and casein. I get varying degrees brain fog, fatigue, depression and gastric problems from them all. Dr Fine believes that anything that causes these elevated antibodies could do the same damage as gluten, so I avoid all 4 items with the same vigour. It ain't easy, but I don't see the point in being vigilant about gluten then going ahead and poisoning myself with soy (or yeast/casein).

[lonewolf]

Hey guys,

How did you discover you are intolerant to soy? Was it allergy testing or trial and error? Also, what other symptoms do you get?

I tried drinking soy milk when I suspected I was allergic to cow's milk. Big mistake. I reacted with worsening joint pain (I already had arthritis), upset stomach and just feeling yucky. When I did an ELISA (Great Smokies Lab) test for IgG food sensitivities several weeks later soy was the 2nd highest reaction, next to gluten. That was almost 10 years ago and I still don't tolerate it well, although most of my soy consumption has been in the form of soy sauce, which I didn't stop to think contained gluten until recently.

Liz

[Jen H]

Thanks, I was just wondering how you found about your soy intolerance. I am in the middle of allergy testing and found out I am also intolerant to soy. It's been incredibly hard to keep it out of my diet. I have been very nauseous and have had stomach pain as well. I'm hoping it's just gluten and soy that I have to stop eating. How long did it take for you to feel better?

[Marlet]

Hi

Nobody's mentioned that most soy milks, cheese et al, have casein which is a dairy product that alot

of people are alergic to.

[dally099]

hmmmm, im finding this interesting as i have been not eating any soy for the last year as it causes me hives and severe facial and throat swelling, well i dedided this week to see about re introducing it and have found that soy lectin does not seem to be a problem, however i had something with soybean oil in it for lunch and im finding that my lower lip has swollen. so it makes me think that the lectin may be okay, and i did some reading online and there are allergy sites that state that the lectins are a very broken down form of the protein and for most people they are tolerable, it states this about soybean oil as well but again i have swelling from that any thoughts?

[Juliebove]

My daughter is allergic to soy. Soy protein or soy flour send her to the bathroom, doubled over in pain. She does not seem to react to soy lecithin, and although I generally do not allow her to have soybean oil, she does get it occasionally in restaurants and doesn't seem to react to it.

[dally099]

i find this most interesting because sure enough i woke up this morning and my lips were a little more swollen and soybean oil was in what i ate yesterday. so im going to give a couple of days to get out of my system and then start eating the lectin. it would sure be nice as at least the lectin would open up my food options a little bit.

[hathor]

There are other soyfree, dairyfree, glutenfree chocolate bars out there. Such as:

Green & Black -- Dark 85%

Dagoba -- Conacado

Art Bar -- Dark; Dark with Coconut

Sweet Earth -- many products

Rapunzel -- Semisweet varieties

I've purchased bars at Trader Joe's too. I can't remember precisely, but I think it was a house brand.

I know this subject has come up repeatedly on this forum, so you might search for some other possibilities. I know someone mentioned a chocolate I wanted to order, but now I can't find the link or remember the name

Also realize that most people who react to soy do not react to soy lecithin. If you are in this category, lots more chocolate possibilities open up

[Kaycee]

I guess I am the unusal one. I gave up soy on a whim, and I personally don't like the thought of soy, like wheat, it is in nearly everything. I knew something else was bothering me after being gluten free for 6 months, so I thought I would do an elimination diet, and I did stop eating soy along with dairy and peanuts. But it made no difference, so I bought all the other products back in, except for soy, as I thought it was just my stomach and that it would never be normal again, or still needed to settle down, and it did come right after another couple of months all on its own.

I haven't gone back to eating soy, not even soy sauce. I just prefer to go without, so it has been just over a year a minimal soy intake, mainly in my daily yoghurt which has soy lecthtin and some chocolates on occassion, it doesn't seem to bother me. For what I thought was just a personal choice I kept avoiding soy. This goes back to a few years ago when some birds down the road were given soy and they died on it, or had horrible deformities, can't remember which, that thought has stuck in the back of my mind. I think there was a reference to that on another thread.

The other day, I couldn't find my normal soy and gluten-free pasta, thinking that maybe I have been too stringent on myself, I tried one with soy in it. I was sick for the next three days, sore stomach, wind and nearly diarrhoea. So I am beginning to think maybe I was right in the first place to avoid soy and that yes it looks like I do have a problem with it.

Cathy, just my personal experience

[cellina]

I am so bummed. I think I am reacting to soy as well now. I thought it was just the gluten. Ditto - what IS a girl to do? So tired!

Does anyone besides me also have trouble with soy products? These go right through me and cause bloating, gas, pain and diarrhea. This is frustrating in finding gluten free products because so many of them contain soy. What's a girl to do?