Soy and breast cancer: Where are we now?

Guest contributor: Karen Collins, M.S., R.D., C.D.N.Karen Collins holds a B.S. degree from Purdue and an M.S. degree from Cornell, both in nutrition. When she’s not writing or speaking, she conducts a private nutrition practice in Jamestown, New York. The pendulum of advice about soy foods has swung steadily during the last 15 years. Initial hope that soy could lower breast cancer risk soon turned to fear that it might promote its development. A new analysis of soy’s relationship to breast cancer seems to suspend the pendulum in the middle of these two extremes, although further research is clearly needed. Do isoflavones offer protection or risk? Early speculation that soy might be protective stemmed from population studies that showed lower incidence of breast cancer in Asia (where soy food consumption is common) than in... [read full story]