The next installment ofThe Taste of Health”, the online column edited by the immunologist Mauro Minelli under the scientific aegis of the Foundation for Personalized Medicine and created in collaboration with time.news Salute, will explore, with the usual contribution of various contributions, the nutritional and health peculiarities of soy, a very resistant and in some ways atypical. The plant, herbaceous and annual, is native to eastern Asia and China in particular, where it was cultivated for the first time at least 5,000 years ago and then became the staple food par excellence in those districts. Soy arrived in Europe by accident in the early 1800s as ballast loaded on a sailing ship returning from the Americas, but it began to spread after the Second World War, starting from the 1970s-80s, encountering growing interest among consumers, both in traditional supermarkets and in the world of organic food.
Main food for oriental populations and beyond, soy is in first place among the legumes for the content in fatty acids and especially in proteinswhich makes it an ‘atypical’ legume, very important mainly in vegetarian and vegan diets.
The soybean plant adapts well to different environmental conditions, so much so that, from China, its cultivation soon spread to Japan, the Philippines and all of South-East Asia. It then arrived in the American continent where soybean crops were developed on a large scale and today, after China and India, the United States but also Brazil and Argentina are among the main soybean producers in the world. However, it must be said that, despite the ease of cultivation, most of the soybeans obtained in the American continent and beyond, are from origine transgenica. This product is certainly used for direct human nutrition, but also and above all for animal nutrition in which, in balanced feed, it represents the fundamental protein intake.
Today the many derivatives of this legume are appreciated such as soy sauce, soy sprouts, soy milk, soy flour, from which as many varieties of food products derive. But, considering the somewhat conflicting biological properties of its main components, especially isoflavones, which can be assimilated to real phytoestrogens, can soy be freely consumed by everyone? On which pathologies can the phytoestrogens contained in it be completely contraindicated? What are the potential risks that may derive from the consumption of this or other foods subjected to genetic manipulation? Why is soy considered different from other legumes from a nutritional point of view? Is it true that its intake can interfere with the physiological functions of our body? And, if so, with which ones?
These are interesting and intriguing questions to which detailed answers will be provided starting from ore 15,00 Of Friday 24 Marchin the usual weekly appointment dedicated to healthy and correct nutrition.