Soy

[JessiMuse]

So I see a lot of debate about soy, and whether it's good or not, so I'm wondering what you guys think. I haven't really seen a lot of scientific evidence against soy, and the only articles I read were written by anti-vegetarians that made exaggerated claims about the benefits of animal fats.

So can someone here tell me what the whole deal with soy is, here? I'm especially curious, since it's in just about every pellet brand out there (with the exception of TOPs, but that stuff is expensive). I mean, why would they use something harmful in brands that supposedly make "veterinarian approved" products?

So I'd like to hear some inputs here.

[Chantilly]

I dont know much about it, but from what I have gathered (I am vegetarian, but thats not why) soy is bad. I dont know what quantities should be in the diet but I dont think it should be much.
Meat chicks are fed feed really high in soy, and by few months they are so over wieght and unhealthy that they cant walk.
And truthly I think 'vetanarian approved' is just another seller. The vets would get money for saying 'Yup, great product, I would totally recond it.. dadada" when the product they are selling might be is from who-knows-what. I dont think the avian vets really care if the product is good or not, so they just say 'yes' because they profit from it.

I dont remember what it was, so i cant make a refrence to it, but i was watching a scam food show and the Australian 'healthy approved' sign on food, is actually paid by companies to be on the product! So people may have been buying this product because it says healthy when it is actually bad for them!
It also talked about the RSPCA aproved sign. You buy this rspca approved chicken meat, supposedbly they are free range and are on paddocks, turns out they are in paddocks but the paddocs are so full they cant turn around! (<- Hows that not animal cruelty!!?)
Thats my oppinion anyway

[Wolf]

You are correct in that it is a bit difficult to find a lot of information on soy, although, I am sure that Pajarita may have more about this than I do, especially since my computer crashed and burned, so I lost all my saved links and information and had to buy a new computer too. I know that this is neither here nor there, but it does mean that I am working off my memory.

Most vets recommend pelleted foods which are almost all high in soy and soy products because they are either paid for selling the product or they see it as a way to ensure a minimum level of nutrition for the birds that they would not otherwise get due to owners lack of knowledge or laziness or both.

The feed manufacturers use it because it is a cheap readily available source of protein. They have a vested interest in suppressing information that shows that soy is not good for birds.

Soy is not a product that any bird eats in the wild, even when it is plentiful due to agriculture because it is poisonous to them and it is only through it being heavily processed that it has been made edible for them. Still some birds are allergic to it and these allergies are often brushed aside as being something else due to how they usually manifest. Many of the birds that are allergic to soy show us their allergic reaction through feather plucking that increases to self mutilation. This was found in one of the avian medical texts that was on my last computer. This is the main reason that I do not feed products containing soy or soy products in them. Kookooloo, my CAG, came to me both plucking and self mutilating and it was through the increase in personal attention, an increase in the amount of sunlight, taking her off of the drugs that she was on, due to the side effects of the drugs and the removing of soy from her diet that I was able to stop the self mutilation and feather plucking. It seems to me that it was only when I saw the information in an avian medical text about the link between soy and feather plucking and self mutilation, and removed this substance from her diet that I saw the most improvement.

You now have the basics about soy from my research ( from memory) as well as my personal experience with this product. I hope that it will be of use to you. Sorry I could not provide the results of my research through the links I had saved and the copies of documents.

[tielfan]

Here's an article on soy: http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... n-soy.html

Raw soy contains trypsin inhbitors which interfere with the digestion of protein, but this problem is easily solved by cooking, freezing or the addition of sulfites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunitz_ST ... _inhibitor The soy in bird pellets has had the trypsin inhibitors removed. Soy is used in most pellets because It's the number one best source of lysine in the bean/legume family, and it complements very well with corn. TOPS pellets do not aim for nutritional completeness and it's questionable whether they actually provide an adequate amount of protein.


All raw/dried bean seeds contain toxins that usually require cooking to eliminate them, although there are a small number of cases where sprouting is enough to get the job done. The problem isn't unique to soy.

[Pajarita]

No, the problem is not unique to soy, it's only that soy seems to be worse than the others. Personally, I don't eat it myself (I have a slow thyroid and was forbidden by my endocrinologist to consume any soy products) or feed it to any of my animals. I actually feed both my dogs and cats grain-free products but I even buy soy-free food for the feral cats I take care of. If you look at all the cheap supermarket pet food, it's all made with soy and all the new health food and holistic health gurus are now turning against it so, if nothing else, it should make people wonder, don't you think?

The thing about soy research is that 95% of the studies out there were paid for by soy producers and, not to be too cynical or distrustful but, it seems to me that there could very well be a bias in the results. There are more recent ones that don't seem to point to it been such a good and healthy thing after all and, as with everything else when it comes to my birds, I follow the rule :"When in doubt, I don't".

See this from the Dr. Mercola site:
http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/avoid_soy.htm

And this from The Global Healing Center:
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natu ... d-for-you/

This from Lita Lee:
http://www.litalee.com/shopexd.asp?id=188

This from Shirley Lipschutz-Robinson site:
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/NaturalFood/Soy