In recent years, soya products have been heralded as the cholesterol-busting, health-giving alternative to dairy products both for children and adults, especially menopausal women. But are they as beneficial as they seem?

In February of last year, two areas of my life which had previously seemed entirely unconnected-converged, resulting in an unsettling eureka moment; the first being my 14 year old, dairy-allergic son; the other being the creeping onset of middle age that is the menopause.

To clarify the situation prior to this epiphany..let me take you back 15 years, to the time of second son’s weaning. I thought I had it all sussed (being son No. 2 and all!) baby rice at 3 months .pureed carrot and potato at 4 months . yoghurt at 6 months. That, however, is when it went pear-shaped!

On trying yoghurt for the first time, son No. 2 (having liberally applied it to most of his face and ears) started to swell up and within 15 minutes looked as if he had gone 5 rounds with Mike Tyson!

After consulting with the doctor on this alarming phenomenon, it was concluded that son No. 2 was indeed allergic to cow’s milk. With limited advice available, various tentative experiments followed with lactose reduced milk and goats’ milk but by the time of being completely weaned off breast milk at 16 months, son No. 2 was happily settled on soya milk and soya yoghurt.

Many blissful years were spent by son No. 2 consuming soya milk - occasionally interrupted by my attempts to determine whether he was developing any greater tolerance to dairy products (and yes he was, by age 14 he could eat ordinary yoghurt and small amounts of chocolate).

Now forward the situation by 14 years - no longer am I concerned with infant feeding, now my principle concern is: "How long will the hot flushes go on?" This time round in my search for knowledge, I had the information overload that is the world wide web!

On sitting down at the computer one morning in February, I considered my options..where to start? Then a snippet of half-remembered advice came back to me that soya milk was recommended to women going through the menopause. Why should that be? It was this thought that started alarm bells ringing. If it was so good for women’s health, how could soya milk also be good for my growing son?

I began researching this two-pronged question and soon found several websites devoted to reporting/commenting on the research into the effect of soya consumption on human health. Some sites I found to be full of scaremongering while others were so technical as to be unintelligible. However, I discovered enough to show me that this very debate had been raging, unbeknown to me, for some time!

Some of the websites I found that I could understand were: www.soyonlineservice.co.nz, www.babymilkaction.org, www.foodstandards.gov.uk and if you are interested/affected by this debate then I think they provide sufficient information to allow you to begin to make an informed choice.

The main point of interest for me was: What constituent of the soya plant is it that may benefit menopausal women and what effect could it have on my son?

The answer, as far as I have understood it, is a group of chemicals called phytoestrogens which are present in many edible plants but present in high levels in the soya plant. It is this group of chemicals which are possibly thought to alleviate the symptoms of the menopause as they mimic the effect of the female hormone oestrogen which is in decline during the menopause. (Although some research suggests that even this popular assumption is due to a placebo effect.) The most shocking statistic I found was in a briefing paper from the Baby Milk Action group which quoted findings from a 1995 research project (relating to infants fed solely on soya infant formula) that: - Infants being fed soya-based artificial baby milks receive the equivalent level of phytoestrogens (per kg body weight) of several contraceptive pills every day (Irvine C et al, 1995).

As a result of my research, I made two decisions: firstly, not to include soya in my own diet but secondly and more importantly to remove soya from my son’s diet. I can’t pretend it was easy, he really resented not having an enjoyable milk substitute in his diet, on top of the fact that there were still other things he couldn’t have because of his allergy.

However, within a couple of months of withdrawing soya, my son suddenly began maturing physically!!.no longer was he the silky-skinned boy he had been up until that time. There were rapid changes in his voice, skin (to typical teenage spots!) and physique and he started to grow at a very much faster rate than he had done for years. All of these very marked changes confirmed that I had made the right decision in withdrawing soya from his diet, as based on the evidence, a reliance on soya milk had been arresting his natural development.

Now, 18 months on from that February morning, son No. 2 can look down from a lofty height on his menopausal mum!!!..and no, the hot flushes still haven’t stopped!

© Lesley Ackerman, 2006 All rights reserved