Thankyou Vanessa for your question (and Illanit for your answer) regarding soy & soy milk!

It is very useful to know. I now have information to pass onto my mother who LOVES her Bonsoy soy milk drink every day – I had introduced this to her many years ago when I had just turned vegetarian & thought at that time that soy milk was the ‘best’ alternative to cow’s milk. Unfortunately she still love to drink it every day.

I will pass on this information to her & appreciate the question and answer on this topic.

Hope you have a great day!

HI Vanessa

nice to hear from you.

Your question about Textured Vegetable Protein is quite topical as all the interest in soy products and the debate of whether they are healthy or not continues.
Many people are now condeming all soy products. I dont feel this is accurate though I have warned for years (Along with many macrobiotic and wholefood researchers and teachers) that some soy products - like the ones added to foods as filler, thickenes, replacements (eg veggies sausages etc) are quite harmful if comsumed regularly.
Many of these foods can create endocrine imbalances especially with the thyorid gland and the reproductive organs. This is also the reasoning for avoiding infant soy formulas - which can trigger precocious publerty and other issues.
Many of these fake foods also funciton as excitotixs which bheave liek MSG in their damaging capacity.
Soy milks are also not recommended for regular use though some which are traditionally made like Bonsoy or Edensoy seem okay for some people but in small amounts - not by the glassful and not everyday by a long shot.
TVP is also a manufactured soy food and often is hydrolysed - creating more excitotoxins - you can read more about them online or on books like the the taste that kills

I know there is one company that makes TVP whithout chemicals which is better of course - I think it i scalled Planet Organic here in Australia. But it is still a fractionised food and also an unefermented soy food.
Soy foods were not harmful how they were traditionally used - in their whole form and usually fermented - shoyu, tamari, natto, tempeh and some longer process tofu (tofu was eaten in small amounts traditionally - not by the slab or as a tofu "steak" as is common today in this protein obsessed world!)

If someone wants to use TVP in cooking I would recommend using organic Tempeh - you can crumble it. Or even cooked brown lentils or lentils and sunflower seeds or lentils and brown rice and seeds, depending on the dish

Vanessa Foley wrote: