What will happen to your body if you drink a cup of soy milk every day? Don't drink one of these, it will cause poisoning!

Hello, this is Science Popularization China. We all like soy milk, and drinking a cup of it for breakfast has become a habit for many people. But some people on the Internet say that "soy milk can cause precocious puberty" and that calcium can be supplemented by drinking soy milk. Is this true?

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Soybeans do contain a type of phytoestrogen called soy isoflavones, but they are not equivalent to true estrogen. Not only will they not cause precocious puberty in children, but they will help maintain the balance of hormones in the body. In addition, studies have shown that the intake of soy and its products can reduce the risk of breast cancer in premenopausal women and significantly improve the bone density of the lumbar spine, hip, and femoral neck in menopausal women.

How much soy milk should we drink? According to the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents", we can eat 15-25 grams of soybeans and soy products every day. Although drinking soy milk every day has many health benefits, don't expect to supplement calcium with soy milk. According to the data of the "Chinese Food Composition Table", the calcium content in soy milk is only 4.6% of that in milk. If you want to supplement calcium, you might as well try other methods.

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Another thing to note is that soy milk must be thoroughly cooked before drinking, otherwise it will cause food poisoning. This is because soy milk contains saponins, which will produce a lot of foam at 80 degrees Celsius, making people feel that the soy milk is "boiling", but in fact it is not cooked and still contains some anti-nutritional factors. If you drink this uncooked soy milk, you will experience poisoning symptoms after a period of time, causing nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

Therefore, if you want to drink soy milk without poisoning, the most important thing is not to turn off the heat when it is "falsely boiling", but to cook it for more than 5 minutes, and then boil it for a while after the foam disappears.

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Review | Zhong Kai, Researcher at the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center