I don’t know if there’s studies out there but I DO know that soy is toxic and they put it in baby formula.
this tidbit is interesting too, and addresses another poster’s comment:
ALUMINUM IN SOY There are high amounts of aluminum in soy foods. All this adds up to a product that is very bad for the nervous system. In fact, tofu made from soy beans has been implicated as a contributing factor in Alzheimer’s Disease. A recent study of Japanese men who migrated to Hawaii found that the men who ate the largest amount of tofu had the most severe cases of Alzheimer’s.
BABY FORMULAS Soy milk formulas are often given to babies with milk allergies, but allergies to soy are almost as common as those to milk. The claim is that soy is an acceptable substitute for milk in the feeding of babies and young children. The main ingredient of soy-based infant formula is soy protein isolate, so along with the growth-depressing trypsin inhibitors, these formulas have a high phytate content. The use of soy formula has caused zinc deficiency in infants and we know how important zinc is to the development of the nervous system. In fact, the reason mothers’ milk is low in iron is because iron interferes with zinc and you don’t want to be giving your children iron in their food until they are about six months old so they can absorb all the zinc from mothers’ milk, preferably breast milk. Aluminum content of soy formula is ten times greater than that of milk-based formula and one hundred times greater than that of unprocessed milk. Aluminum has a toxic effect on the kidneys of infants. Soy formulas lack cholesterol, which is absolutely essential for the development of the brain and the nervous system. Mothers’ milk is extremely high in cholesterol and mothers’ milk has a special enzyme that helps the baby absorb cholesterol. It is very important for growing children to have a lot of cholesterol in their diet. Cholesterol is also very important for the development and the integrity of the intestinal wall, so that you do not get leaky gut syndrome. And I am sure that the reason we have so much of this problem today is that the babies were not getting enough cholesterol when they were growing up, or not absorbing it properly. Soy formulas also are made with sucrose rather than lactose and galactose, which are human milk sugars that play an important role in the development of the nervous system. Soy formulas used to have lactose added, but that was too expensive, so now they just add sucrose. Not surprisingly, animal-feeding studies show a lower weight gain for rats on soy formula than for those on whole milk, high lactose formula. I am not in favour of formula feeding at all, but if that is what by necessity you must do, you want a milk-based formula that has lactose in it. The best thing is to find a Jersey cow and get this wonderful Jersey cow raw milk. It should be very clean of course; the cow must be healthy and then you add lactose to it and a number of other things, including some cod liver oil and coconut oil. All of this is in my whole foods baby formula recipe, in Nourishing Traditions. Children on macrobiotic diets which include the use of soy milk and large amounts of whole grains also show lower weight gain. Children brought up on high phytate diets tend to be thin and scrawny.