Soy Milk Doesn't Do a Body Good

    If you think that my rants on food are insane, I know how you feel.  There are several types of food that people say are awful that I think they're crazy for thinking that (I'm going to talk about one next week, in fact).  As I've mentioned in my previous two installments of "HOLY CRAP DON'T EAT THAT" is that the foods I'm talking about are not, in and of themselves bad.  However, they've been embraced by the food industry as cheap, easy ways to either make the food taste better to the American palette or boost the nutritional content of a food and have, therefore, been put in everything.  Corn syrup and salt have been added to make poor quality food taste better, and our health has suffered because of it.  Soy has been added because it has protein in it.  At some point, food manufacturers discovered that items that have added protein can have their prices increased, so here we are with tons of food with soy flour, soy lecithin, soybean oil, etc.
     Soy beans are the food equivalent of bamboo.  They grow quickly, they're hardy, and they recover (grow back) quickly.  They can also be used in a metric ton of stuff.  Soy can be used to replace petroleum oil in everything from plastic to the rubber in tires.  Seriously, except for gasoline (they're still working on it), if you can make it out of petroleum, you can make it out of soybean oil.  This stuff is a freaking miracle.  So why do I try to refuse to put it in my body?
     Here's the part where I sound crazy then I'll back up and explain myself.  If you are female or have a female of any age in your house you should seriously consider burning everything with soy in it.  BURN IT.  I'm not kidding.  If you are the miraculous single dad that has 3 boys, well, this isn't such a concern, but you might want to pay attention if you ever plan to have a woman eat at your house again.
     Before we started using soy in literally everything we put into our bodies, it had one major use - estrogen replacement.  See, soy has what's called a phytoestrogen, or plant estrogen.  For those of you who skipped biology class, estrogen is the group of primary sex hormones for females of all species.  They create breasts, increase fat stores, stimulate uterine lining growth, reduce calcium absorption in bones, and stimulate ovulation among like 50 other things. In short, estrogen makes girls become women and women to become fertile.  That seems great at the surface.
     In fact, there's evidence that small amounts of plant estrogen before and during puberty can reduce the chance of breast and prostate cancer when children reach adulthood.  There's also evidence that once a woman has had breast cancer and gone into remission, taking small amounts of plant estrogen can increase a woman's chance of staying in remission.  Again, great and wonderful concepts.
      So, why don't I eat soy and recommend that every woman burn all of the soy additives in her house?  Because we, as Americans do not eat a small amount of soy.  If you eat processed foods at all, you eat soy all the time every day.  Most fast food burgers have soy in the bun, soy fillers in the burger, and soybean oil on the grill that it's cooked on.  Then you have the french fries powdered with soy flour then deep fried in soybean oil.  Even if you order the salad, your salad dressing's most likely made with soybean oil.  In fact, the only thing I can think of that wouldn't have any soy in it at a fast food restaurant is the sodas.  I'm not convinced it's not there somewhere, but it isn't in the ingredients.
      Remember all those things I mentioned that soy does for women?  Imagine enhancing them every time you eat anything.  Your breasts will get bigger (happy time for men, but sad time for your back).  Your fat stores will increase (insert screams here).  Your bones will absorb much less calcium (broken hips anyone?).  Then we get to the really scary stuff:  It thickens your uterine lining and stimulates ovulation.  Want to know a way to instantly increase your menstrual cramps?  Thicken your uterine lining!  Yay!  Want to know a way to create pain between menstrual cycles?  Stimulate ovulation too much.  Double yay!
      My family has a history of polycystic ovarian syndrome.  That means we're prone to getting tons of cysts on our ovaries.  These cysts hurt like words I've promised myself I won't say on this blog.  Let's just say that I have never been stabbed in my sides, but I think I know how it'd feel.  Guess what ovulation stimulation does?  It creates more freaking cysts!  Yeah, really, when I'm really, really careful about my soy intake, the knife-like pain in my lady parts decreases exponentially.  I often wonder how many women are out there experiencing this pain and not knowing why.
     Okay, so we know what excess estrogen can do to a woman, but what's the problem, right?  Our bodies are programmed to change the amount of estrogen in our bodies to be less or more depending on our environment, right?  Right.  Kinda.
     See, every woman's body comes equipped with a switch in her brain to stop producing estrogens when they get to a certain concentration.  So, we shouldn't often have too much estrogen, right?  Wrong.
     The problem is that in addition to giving us an estrogen boost, soy goes up and disables that switch.  That means, when you have an excess of estrogen, your body can't stop producing it.  It just keeps making more and more and more.
     So, now we have a situation where you're producing estrogen naturally, adding to your natural estrogen with a natural plant estrogen, and now a body that can't stop producing your natural estrogen.  Oh, and did I mention that the fat that the estrogen creates stores estrogen in it which means you're now toxic with it?  It does.
    Doesn't that seem like it's going to lead to a bad situation?  It does.  Excess soy leads to excess weight gain, increased menstrual pain, and even infertility.  I've read journal articles about the dangers of soy, and I can't figure out why it's still on the market and in every freaking thing I can buy.  My only answer is that it must be a capitalism thing where the food manufacturers have discovered how much money they can make off of it, and refuse to let it be taken off the market.  After all, they all say those convenience foods shouldn't be eaten as much as they obviously are.  Yeah, that's happening, guys.
     So, if you want the women in your life (including you, if you're female) to be healthy, I highly recommend eschewing soy.  That means, to begin with, substituting canola oil for vegetable oil (that's actually soybean oil, kids) then start reading your freaking labels.  Soy lecithin makes fats coagulate with your food easier.  Gee that seems healthy.  Give us more hormones that we can handle and blend fats into our food.  Add in soy milk, soy flour, soy grits, soy meal, and soy sauce and you have a huge list of what you shouldn't be eating.
     If you want an easy way to know if you have soy in your food, skip right to the bottom where all food products are now required to put allergy information and see what's listed there.  If soy's there, put it down.  Then write a letter and scream at the company.  The only way to stop manufacturers from using this as an additive is to stop giving them monetary benefits from doing so.

Your Weekly Frugal Recipe - Chicken Enchiladas

Chicken Enchiladas

The Food Stamp Way

Skills	Prep	Cook
Blender/Food Processor
What do these meters mean?

     This is another one of those recipes that you might need to plan to make ahead of time.  It takes a little more time than a lot of people like, but it shouldn't take more than about 25-30 minutes of prep and 25 minutes of cooking time.  I've made this ahead of time and stuck it in the fridge to bake later.
     The main reason I love this recipe is I don't like to have to take the time to roll my ingredients into each tortilla separately, put them in a pan and then put sauce over them and bake.  This is made in a casserole method, but when you cut it into pieces, most people don't know the difference between this and the individually rolled enchiladas.

Equipment you'll need
Skillet, blender or food processor, 11x7 baking dish, saucepan, whisk, knife, cutting board

Serves 10-12

Ingredient	Amount	Cost
Corn tortillas	12	$0.43*
Medium onion	1	$0.50
Canola oil	1 oz	$0.06*
Shredded Monterey Jack	1 lb	$4.23
Chicken	1 lb	$2.28
Butter	1/4 c.	$0.34*
Flour	1/4 c.	$0.03*
Chicken Broth	2 c.	$0.78
Sour cream	8 oz	$0.96
Poblano pepper	1	$0.50
Fresh cilantro	1/4 bunch	$0.14*
Total		$10.25
* Based on price per package divided by amount used.

Price per plate =$1.25  Notes about ingredients:

The poblano pepper has to be roasted.  If you're not comfortable with this, you can pick up a 4 oz can of chopped chiles for roughly the same price.

You have to use fresh cilantro for this recipe - no substitutions.

Prep Instructions:

Chop the onion into medium-size pieces.

Cut the chicken into medium-sized pieces.  Heat the vegetable oil over a medium flame and cook the chicken and onion in it.  If you have it, sprinkle some cumin over the raw chicken.

Roast the poblano pepper under your broiler for about 5 minutes and skin it.  Put the pepper, cilantro, and chicken broth into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

Instructions:

1.   Preheat your oven to 425º F
2.   Melt the butter in a saucepan and whisk the flour into it and allow it to cook until it starts to froth.
3.   Add the chicken broth mixture to the flour and butter and whisk together quickly.  Allow to simmer.
4.   Add the sour cream to the sauce whisk everything together.
5.   Grease a pan with cooking spray or a little canola oil.  Cover the bottom of the pan with a third of the sauce.
6.  Top the sauce with 6 corn tortillas, allowing them to overlap to cover all the sauce completely.

7.   Cover the tortillas with all of your chicken pieces.

8.   Cover the chicken with about half of the cheese.

9.   Cover the cheese with a third of the sauce.

10. Cover the sauce with another layer of tortillas.

11. Cover the tortillas with the last of the sauce.

12. Cover the pan with aluminum foil with the shiny side pointed toward the food. 

13. Bake at 425º for 20 minutes.

14.  Remove the aluminum foil and sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top.  Replace in the oven and bake for 5 minutes or until the cheese is completely melted.

What recipe would you like done the food stamp way? Comments? Questions? Tweet to @cookingcheap