It's like flour. Flour is a useful ingredient. Nobody expects it to taste good. Just throw a little silken tofu into a blender, add a splash of vanilla extract, a sprinkling of cocoa powder, a dollop of maple syrup, and you'll see. And as full menopause draws nearer, physicians typically prescribe Premarin, an estrogen derived from pregnant mares' urine.
Many women clearly think so.
At 49, Love, a vocal and controversial critic of hormone-replacement therapy, has entered perimenopause. To cope, she exercises daily, adds phytoestrogen-rich foods like soybeans and flaxseed to her diet and doses herself with black cohosh, an herbal source of phytoestrogens that comes in liquid or tablet form. For the dietary-supplement industry, the infatuation with phytoestrogens is a bonanza. At Capitol Drugs in West Hollywood, California, women of a certain age are stocking up on black cohosh and dong quoi, another estrogenic herb that can be added to tea. Yet none of these products have been adequately tested for safety and effectiveness because dietary supplements are not stringently regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.