Eating soy to lower cholesterol...

You've seen them - the nutritionally enlightened who munch on curried tofu as though they actually enjoyed it. But a new study vindicating vegetarians' claims that soy's good for you may persuade you to give the pasty-looking foodstuff another try.

Researchers from the University of Kentucky in Lexington report that eating soy protein significantly reduces moderate to high concentrations of cholesterol in the blood.

"People with the highest levels of cholesterol benefited the most from eating soy protein," says endocrinologist and nutritionist James W. Anderson, who led the study. "They saw an average reduction of about 24 percent." Most cholesterol-lowering drugs achieve similar feats, although with side effects.

Anderson and his colleagues pooled the results of a clinical trials that together included 730 men, women, and children. Using the pooled data, they analyzed the effect of eating 47 grams, on average, of soy protein a day. As they report in the Aug. 3 New England Journal of Medicine, volunteers who got half their protein from soy saw their cholesterol concentrations drop by about 10 percent, on average.

But soy protein's benefits may extend further, Anderson notes. Soy contains vegetable compounds known as isoflavones, which some researchers think may help prevent cancer. "The reason that I can be enthusiastic about using soy in baking and instead of meat is that it will necessarily lower fat intake," says Anderson. "And it could have other benefits."

However, Nancy D. Ernst of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., notes that the researchers may be seeing simply the benefits of more healthful eating. Because the Kentucky group pooled the data from very different types of studies, interpretation becomes difficult. "The study itself doesn't convey any greater wisdom," says Ernst.

She worries that instead of replacing animal proteins with soy proteins, people will just add soy protein to their diet. This practice would lead to a higher-calorie diet and ultimately more overweight Americans.

Nevertheless, Ernst agrees that "if you substitute soy proteins for animal proteins associated with saturated fats, that would likely be a very healthy practice."