Man, did I hate tofu. Call it a bad first impression. I can still remember my discomfort as a kid seeing those white gelatinous blocks floating around in beat-up pickle buckets in the Asian market where my mother decided, one day in 1975, that all of our food was now to come from. Those were tough times for all of us. Her noble experiment came to a cataclysmic end with a tofu meatloaf that would have choked a corpse.
Soy foods are a staple in many Asian diets, two or three servings a day being the norm.
Researchers have been examining a possible connection between this pattern of soy consumption and the fact that Asian populations have remarkably low rates of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer. Most of the research has focused on phytochemicals in soybeans known as isoflavones. These chemicals have limited distribution in nature soy foods being the only major dietary source and hundreds of studies have documented their effectiveness in reducing the chances of developing heart disease and several forms of cancer. Other studies have suggested they even ease menopausal symptoms and reduce post-menopausal bone loss. The thinking is that since isoflavones are weak phytoestrogens that bind to cellular estrogen receptors, they block the stronger estrogens produced by the body, and so inhibit the development of estrogen-related cancer.