If you pick up a carton of soy milk, chances are you’ll spot some sort of verbiage boasting the beverage’s heart health benefits. But it’s not the only soy-based food product bearing a “heart healthy” badge. That’s because, in 1999, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal agency responsible for supervising food and drug safety guidelines, approved the claim that soy, and the protein that comes from it, can help prevent heart disease. The decision was based on decades of research that supported the connection between soy and its cholesterol-lowering properties, which can help prevent heart disease.
But in 2017, the FDA announced a plan to downgrade the claim, citing inconsistent evidence that has cropped up since 1999. It was the first time the FDA backtracked on an official claim of this nature.
