Years ago, few people had heard of soy or soy beans, except maybe for a bit of soy sauce in a Chinese restaurant. Now the word is on the tongues of the health conscious, not just in Asian countries, but all over. Soy, it's claimed, is beneficial to the heart and bones, it lowers cholesterol, and help with weight control.

An article in SpiritIndia.com adds yet another benefit of eating soy:

Studies of Asian populations have found that women whose diets contain many foods made of soy, which are rich in phytoestrogen, have a lower breast cancer risk.

Marina Touillaud, Ph.D. of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France, and colleagues administered a diet history questionnaire to 58,049 postmenopausal French women to examine the association between the consumption of four types of plant lignans and the risk of invasive breast cancer.

Why are soy beans and foods good for us? Dan's Scoop on Soybeans explains:

Soybeans are the only legume containing all nine essential amino acids (the only proteins the human body can't manufacture on its own). Soybeans have no cholesterol and are low in saturated fats and sodium. They are an excellent source of dietary fibre. They are high in iron, calcium, B vitamins, zinc, lecithin, phosphorous and magnesium.

The article continues:

Soybeans contain over 35 percent protein by weight-which is more than any other unprocessed plant or animal food. An acre of soybeans produces between ten and twenty times more useable proteins than an equivalent acre used to graze beef cattle. Even commercial soybeans are relatively free of chemical toxins. Meat, fish and poultry have about twenty times and dairy foods about four and one half times more pesticide residues than soybeans. Similarly, soybeans contain fewer radioactive residues and no synthetic hormone additives.