In 60 words or less, why should I be eating more soy protein products?
Soy protein contains a variety of nutrients either absent or in very small quantities in other foods. Its chemopreventives aid in the prevention, and sometimes even cure, of cancer and heart disease. With respect to weight loss, soy products, such as Heartline, aid in keeping insulin in balance so you gain muscle mass and keep fat off, (see the work of Dr. Sears, famous author of The Zone). These are just a few of soy's many benefits.



What nutrients can I get from soy that I cannot obtain from other food sources?
In quality or quantity, its isoflavones, of which there are four. Currently, genistein is getting the most press because of its strong cancerolytic properties. More impressive still, is the total make-up of soy's amino acids themselves. For reasons we still do not fully understand, soy protein reduces LDL cholesterol even when subjects are on a diet already high in soluble and insoluble fiber. No other food we know of provides this degree of nutritional benefit.


Is genistein really that great of a cancer fighting agent? What is the quality and quantity of the research?
Yes, it really is. There are over 200 studies which conclude that genistein is a strong anti-cancer agent. Lumen products are high in genistein -- more so than other soy protein products according to analyses conducted at Rutgers University's Center for Advanced Food Studies. You can more about its many benefits, including our ground-breaking analysis of its value in estrogen replacement therapy in Dr. Paxton's research review.


How can I lose weight using Lumen products?
By using them regularly, particularly using our meat replacement products in place of animal meats. Avoid foods high in saturated fats, which include most animal products. Avoid margarine and shortening altogether. If you are not familiar with insulin and how not regulating your balance of fats, carbohydrates, and protein can make you fat, study Dr. Sear's work. Additionally, our extrusion process produces meat substitutes that have a high expansion ratio. That is, they expand in your stomach far beyond their "pre-eaten size," thereby giving you a "full feeling." A 150 calorie bag of Stonewall's Jerquee will make you feel like you've eaten a full meat. If you eat less, stay away from excess carbohydrates, and keep your insulin balance in check, you will not only lose weight, but you will add muscle, increase your mental alertness, and live longer.


Some Lumen snacks are about 30% caloric fat! How can I lose weight if the product isn't fat-free?
This is the importance of studying Dr. Sear's work. As he points out, we are consuming less fat now than at any time in our country's history and yet we are fatter than ever! Why? The answer is simple: we've been incorrectly told, for over 15 years, that reducing fat grams was the key to weight loss. It isn't. It is the hormone insulin that tells the body to store fat as energy. That's why farmers add corn and other hi-carb grains to fatten their cattle. They don't add fat. Fat doesn't make you fat. High insulin levels do. For years we didn't understand why Lumen Foods' customers were telling us that our products were helping them lose weight. It didn't make sense. We just gratiously accepted their kudos and left it at that. Now we understand a little better what's happening.


You say that Lumen products will supply me with all essential amino acids, but isn't soy low in methionine?
Yes, soy products tend to be lower in methionine. (Although some manufacturers artificially add it in for marketing hype, we do not.) But we take the view that our customers are not going to eat only Heartline or our other meat substitutes in their diet. It's absurd to think that they will. Grains and other vegetable sources contain all the methionine that one needs in the daily diet. Corn, in particular, contains ample amounts of methionine. As with all things, the key here is dietary balance.


How can your products be healthful when some of them are clearly not "low sodium"?
Sodium is a problem if its is consumed in balance with potassium. I pointed this out back in 1986 when I wrote the The Lumen Book and more recent studies have done nothing to dispel the findings. But old way of dietary thinking die hard. The fact is, vegetarians whose sodium intake exceeds 5,000 mg. per day have been studied without any notable effect on blood pressure. How can this be? They aren't having to suffer from the ill-effects of a high sodium, low potassium animal-based diet.
Knowing this to be the case, this is why we chose potassium sorbate to add potassium to our products and aid in preserving product freshness.


Do you use any hydrogenated fats or oils in your products?
Absolutely not. The vegetable oil used in our "none-fat-free" products is soy oil: high in polyunsaturated fat, very low in saturated fat. (Or, as nutritionists say, our products have a low "P/S ratio.")


Do you add MSG?
From a strictly scientific point of view, we feel that the cry over MSG (monosodium glutamate) is quite exaggerated. Glutamic acid and many of its derivatives are found freely throughout nature. Nonetheless, we do not add any to our products. It just isn't necessary, simply because our flavorings perform quite well without it. In fact, the most common result of MSG in sensitive persons, a malady called CRS (Chinese Restaurant Syndrome), has never been reported to us in the many years we've been in business.


Do you use any preservatives?
Yes, primarily potassium sorbate. We use it not just because it prevents mold. We use it because its healthful. Strangely enough, there are some health food stores who ban products with potassium sorbate, despite the fact that it has the stamp of approval by Dr. Michael Jacobsen, president and founder of Center for Science in the Public Interest. This might be because of comments made by self-appointed nutritional guru, Ruth Winters, some years ago. None of the in-house nutritional swamis at the major health food chains will even talk to us on this subject. And why is that? Because once again their opinions have absolutely no basis in scientific fact. Please read our page on potassium sorbate if you have any further questions about this healthful, naturally occurring polyunsaturated fat.


What is potassium sorbate and why do you use it?
Potassium sorbate is a polyunsaturated fat used in small quantities in the food industry to prevent mold, although at the right acidity it also inhibits bacterial growth. We use it to prevent mold and to add more potassium to our product as a balance to its sodium content. It is a natural salt of sorbic acid (also a preservative), and it was originally discovered and extracted from the mountain ash tree over 100 years ago. We have written an entire page on potassium sorbate if you have any further questions. See also the answer to the preceding question.


Do you use any coal tar dyes, emulsifiers, surfactants, or other artificial, man-made chemicals?
No. There is not a single ingredient in Lumen Foods' products that you cannot find freely in nature. However, a few of our ingredients are manufactured because of the high cost and ecological damage created when extracting them from plants in quantity. Potassium sorbate is one such example.


Are all your ingredients natural?
Yes. That is, they can be found in nature and not solely in someone's laboratory. All our products truly fit the definition of "natural food."


I have a problem with gas when I eat soy products. Will I have this same problem with yours?
Probably not. It has been long-known that certain "oligosaccharides," namely rafinose, stachyose, and verbose, are the gas-producing culprits. We extract out most of the these sugars out of our product using purified water, although our retaining a small amount is healthful because its promotes healthy intestinal flora ("bifidobacteria"). Although there is an enzyme, galactosidase, that breaks these sugars down, human bodies do not make their own. Hence, the creation of such balloon-reducing products, such as Beano (r). As an aside, soy is a member of the Leguminae family. It's a bean. And all members of the legame family have, to one degree of another, a high level of oligosaccharides.
Does this mean you will not get any initial intestinal gas from eating Lumen? Not necessarily. We have a few cases reported, despite our "sugar reduction" process. Nonetheless, nearly all report that this phenomenon is either greatly reduced or disappears entirely after a few days of use. It appears that when soy products are initially eaten, there is a period of adaptation by the intestinal flora.


Doesn't most of the benefit in eating soy come from the fact that you're eating less meat?
No. Some of the benefit comes from reducing meat consumption, but not all. As pointed out in an earlier question, soy protein contains nutrients that are unique and not found elsewhere. When studying soy benefits, particularly those that involve epidemiological studies, one cannot reasonably point to meat reduction or abstention as a sole cause.