I find fromage frais makes a great mayo alternative - for things like tuna and sweetcorn (perhaps in a pitta or on a jacket potato) or chicken or salad - it's milk based so could help towards your daily intake.

great article! I love that bit about not eating anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food lol But than, my great grandmother was a southern dairy farmer!

One of my pet peeves for years now has been how little food is sold in the supermarket. 90% of what is there are items I don't consider food. Conversely, I'm distressed by how many people, when confronted with a relatively common food item (a turnip, for example) have no idea what it is or what to do with it.

yadda yadda, eat what works for you and take viactiv if you dont get enough calcium and vit-d through food

Hi What is the concern of women's health and soy milk? I just googled it and everything I came up with was positive not negative.
Thank you
Sharon

Truthfully, the soy thing has been blown out of proportion. Soy is a plant estrogen. For awhile they were talking about how great it was based on the health and diet of people in Japan where it is a regular part of their life. So in typical american fashion some people decided that if a little is good, then a lot must be better. So they started making things with concentrated soy isoflavones. And some people started ingesting mega doses

Lo and behold there was a study that found that excessive intake of soy isoflavones was detrimental to health. so in typical alarmist fashion the word went out that if a lot is bad, then a normal amount must be also.

Thanks for the information. I'll keep drinking my soy protein shakes. I'm sure they are much healthier than having a shake from a fast food restaurant.
Sharon

Its all about moderation. No one food should be used to excess.

Oh by the way, the connection was with thyroid function..so I guess if I had documented thyroid disease I might avoid soy just to be hyper vigilant.

I avoid soy partially because of the thyroid function issue. I still eat soy products but less often than I used to. I now use unsweetened almond milk instead of soy milk and I use whey protein powders instead of soy.

soy protein powder might be one I would avoid just because it is a super concentrated form of soy.

but I've seen people avoiding edemame - you would have to eat a darn lot of edemame to get an overdose of soy

I'm glad you said this. I think one of my first posts on here was regarding soy. I should go look and refresh my memory on what people said.

I love edamame. I limit soy sauce because of the sodium, but then again, a TLBS while cooking isn't that bad when it is for more than 1 person. I'm not a big tofu fan unless it is in hot and sour soup or disguised some way.

So maybe I WILL go back to my chocolate soy milk in the AM. Well, depending on the price. Sometimes LF or FF chocolate milk is much cheaper.

I thought this to be true as well, that we didn't need to supplement our diets with dairy beyond childhood, but someone else pointed out to me that animals (who don't drink milk after childhood) still get their calcium by chewing on the bones of their prey. We don't always do that as humans, so I wonder if there is some validity to adding dairy?

What bones do deer chew onto get calcium?

I was just kidding - but there are tons of non-animal sources of calcium like broccoli, spinach, soy, kale, etc.

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/calcium.htm#table1

The more protein you ingest the more calcium you need. Can't remember why. Which is why the vegetarian deer dont need to eat bones, but the carnivores do

I read that Nutritionism article by Pollan (author of "Omnivore's Dilemma") too in the NY Times magazine and found it to be great stuff - much in the vein of Marion Nestle's "Food Politics" and "What to Eat?" (which I recommended on a 3FC thread somewhere) - but the basic idea is that people have been living long and healthfully eating a varied diet uncomplicated by what specific nutrient and food to worry/obsess about, the only real standards needed are eat less (for American standards), eat light, lots of veggies/fruits and less meat/dairy.