Soy Foods Limit Hot Flashes

Red wine and chocolate have been making headway in the food-as-medicine race, but good old tofu isn't giving up any time soon. Researchers have found that consuming two servings a day of soy foods like tofu and soymilk helps reduce the number and severity of hot flashes from menopause.

The study was published in Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Association, two things we did not know existed. In it, researchers from the University of Delaware analyzed the results of 19 different studies of the effects of soy on menopause and ascertained that there is a link between soy consumption and less terrible hot flashes.

According to the Huffington Post, the study found that women who consumed 54 milligrams of the estrogenlike isoflavones found in soy — about what one would get from two large glasses of soy milk or seven ounces of tofu — reported a 20.6 percent decrease in frequency of hot flashes and a 26 percent decrease in their severity.

Two servings a day doesn't sound like so much, but rather than chugging two glasses of soy milk, mix it up a bit and experiment with some of our tofu recipes