Eden Foods bills itself as the “oldest natural and organic food company in America” and is best known for its EdenSoy line of organic soy milk.
Most of Eden’s products are organic and nearly all are vegan.
It’s a very familiar brand in health food stores and marketing studies have shown it to be a favorite of female and liberal customers.
These customers, to put it mildly, are not pleased with the news that Eden hired the Thomas More Law Center to file a lawsuit against Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and other government parties, associated with the Obama administration’s rule on contraception.
The lawsuit claims the contraception rule violates Eden Foods owner Michael Potter’s religious freedom under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by requiring him to provide his employees with medical coverage for contraception.
Potter believes contraception “almost always involves immoral and unnatural practices.”
Irin Carmon at Salon.com launched the story yesterday (April 11, 2013). Predictably enough, it has gone viral, with a massive outcry on Facebook and other social media.
In brief, protesters are not pleased by Eden’s pursuit of a right-wing ideological agenda and its espousal of Catholic church teachings on the evils of contraception. Thousands of people have already voiced their intent to stop buying Eden products, including Facebook commenter Cheryl DeMarco who summed up the issues particularly well. “Now that you’ve sued to avoid providing birth control coverage to your employees based on bogus science, I don’t trust you to provide me with clean food based on good science. I won’t be buying your products.”
As yet, the debaters have not pointed out the supreme irony of Eden Foods — one of the top manufacturers of soy milk — coming out against birth control. All soy milks — including organic soy milks — include high levels of the plant estrogens known as isoflavones. Over the past seven decades, scientists have linked isoflavones to reproductive problems in all animal tested, including the human animal. For women, soy contributes to anovulatory cycles and other symptoms indicative of infertility; for men, it causes adverse effects on the quality and quantity of sperm.
The illustration posted by Salon.com — and posted here — was surely not intended to be literal. But yes, this product can make birth control unnecessary!
Indeed, in the 1970s the World Health Organization funded a $5 million study through the University of Chicago and sent researchers out in the field in search of all-natural contraceptives. The idea was to find a safe and effective alternative to the high-dose birth control pills of that era. Researchers visited dozens of native cultures to discover which herbs and plants were being used to prevent pregnancy, examined hundreds of plants and analyzed their phytochemicals. Although they found many contraceptive plants — soy, prominently among them — they ultimately abandoned the project. Not because “natural” methods didn’t work, but because the side effects were similar to — and just as serious — as those of the birth control pill.
The obvious conclusion here is that customers who consume EdenSoy “soy milks” are unwittingly —and almost certainly unwillingly — swallowing liquid birth control. Lest any readers at this point think soy milk might a good “all natural” form of contraception, however, my advice is don’t count on it! Soy isoflavone content varies from carton to carton, and any contraceptive effects would depend as well on the amount and duration of consumption.
Eden Foods furthermore has a shabby track record in terms of supporting the health of babies. In 1990 the FDA investigated after a two-month old girl in California was hospitalized with severe malnutrition. Her parents had fed her EdenSoy brand soy milk instead of infant formula. Because of this and a similar incident in Arkansas involving the SoyMoo brand of soy milk, the FDA issued a warning on June 13, 1990, stating soy milk was “grossly lacking in the nutrients needed for infants.” The FDA asked — but unfortunately has never required — all manufacturers to put warning labels on soy milk so that they would not be used as formula substitutes.
Since these tragic incidents, most brands of soy milk — but not EdenSoy — include warning labels in tiny print on their packaging.
Sadly, babies continue to be hospitalized and die because of EdenSoy and other brands of soy milk. At least four couples have been found guilty of the deaths of their babies fed soy milk in lieu of soy infant formula. Many of these parents were health conscious, well-meaning vegans who truly thought they were doing a good thing for their babies by choosing organic soy milk instead of commercial soy formula. The myth that soy is a health food and Eden’s irresponsibility led to these tragic deaths.
How many more unnecessary and tragic cases of malnutrition and deaths will occur before Eden takes the right action? For me, the “right action” is clear: Boycott Eden Foods.
Sources
For more information about Eden’s lawsuit:
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/organic_eden_foods_quiet_right_wing_agenda/
For more information about soy formula and the effect soy milk and other products containing soy vegetable protein on reproduction, The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food.
If Eden foods are concerned with supporting nutrient absorption and health instead of big business , why wouldn’t they want to protest it. Maybe those Liberals need to look at the impact of the pill on a woman’s body ….Life expectancy and long term impact to women and fetus/child ….
Also, I’d like to know who these liberals are that are SO upset ..I don’t see a citation to support this nutritionist statement…..loaded comments indicating a group without a reference to support it make me question the source and the statement.
Share some information on what the pill does to the body. Cite sources please.
You can start by reading the insert in a birth control pack.
If Eden foods are concerned with supporting nutrient absorption and health instead of big business , why wouldn’t they want to protest it. Maybe those Liberals need to look at the impact of the pill on a woman’s body ….Life expectancy and long term impact to women and fetus/child ….
Also, I’d like to know who these liberals are that are SO upset ..I don’t see a citation to support this nutritionist statement…..loaded comments indicating a group without a reference to support it make me question the source and the statement.
I have to agree with most of the other comments here. The article doesn’t relate at all to the helpful, well-researched & well-presented information I usually find here that has helped my family & me so much on our journey to become healthier. What it has done is lead me to question relying on your site for trustworthy information in the future. Even if the point is supposed to be the hypocrisy of the CEO’s stance, the way in which the information is presented & the sources cited have done nothing but confuse the issue…to say the least.
I still love your page, lot’s of awesome information here!! the information is put out there and chances are it won’t please everyone, so no need to act like a bunch of juveniles by threatening to unlike the page because you didn’t like one article. If you don’t agree with the article, that’s fine…everyone’s entitled to their beliefs….now let’s move on!!
I would say that this and the schoolchild-breastfeeding-while-standing-on-his-milking-stool has certainly got people’s minds off the vegan-breastfeeding-brewhaha
Consider this: In the United States, if a nurse who works with infants refuses even one of the vaccinations mandated for healthcare workers, his/her job would quickly be on the line.
In other countries, however, the right of healthcare workers to reject vaccination is still respected even in the midst of a localized outbreak of whooping cough where the nurses’ job is to inject newborns with the pertussis vaccine day in and day out.
Taken from your blog.
How come in this blog the employer does not have any rights? Where did they go? I think they must have rights in Israel.
There are lots of rights for vaccination but there are no rights to say no to contraception of my employees.
Are you being consistent here?
You being raised Catholic does not give you any authority to bash Catholics. I was not raised Catholic, I am a proud convert and would love for you to apologize to your Catholic sisters and the Church.
This should be about food as opposed to bashing Catholics.
Where is the unsubscribe button here?
Wow. This whole post is fairly ridiculous. I hope in the future you’ll keep your political commentary to yourself.
I don’t think these people are trying to kill anyone with their products. Unhealthy as it may be, soy really has nothing to do with birth control.
Birth control is often abortive, which kills a life. Soy, at the very most, will disrupt the hormones of a woman or cause health problems in a child, possibly causing infertility.
I still fail to see any correlation between the two at all. If your blog on health is going to turn political, you will lose many followers, including me.
Birth control is not abortive. You need to learn how it works before making a statement such as that. Birth control pills prevent ovulation. Nothing is destroyed. Each egg you have in your ovaries is not destined to become a living being. Birth control pills decreases the release of a certain hormone in the body. This keeps an egg from being released by your ovaries. If there is no egg released, then there is nothing to become fertilized, and therefore the contraceptive is not an abortifacient.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/birth-control-pill2.htm
AmandaonMaui,
I think you need to learn a little more about birth control. Your link was skimp. Yes, birth control pills ARE abortifacients. The birth control pill works in three ways.
1. suppress ovulation
2. thicken cervical mucus.
3. alters the endometrium.
Women do still ovulate sometimes. When they do, the first fail-safe is that the cervical mucus has been thickened, thereby making it harder for sperm to travel. But, a woman man still ovulate and sperm may still navigate the cervical mucus and may fertilize the egg. It’s this third part, the second fail-safe, that makes the birth control pill an abortifacient: the uterine wall is altered to be inhospitable to a fertilized egg, therefore, the zygote cannot implant itself and will be aborted.
If you believe that life begins at conception, then you should have a big problem with birth control pills.
Amanda, even the insert on most birth control packets will describe the three ways the birth control works. (I should say “the pill).
I agree with those standing by Eden. This determination that employers should be forced to supply their employees with “birth control” is outrageous. These rulings destroy the freedom of an employer by being forced to pay for something that is destroys a life and is dangerous for the life of the mother as well. I applaud Eden for standing up to the bullying tactics of our leaders and hopefully this will be reversed. It is encouraging hearing from so many who value life and freeedom of religion, thanks for speaking up.
Fermented Soy is Only Soy Food Fit for Human Consumption, according to Natural News, so why the uproar?….Unfermented soy is bad for everyone, especially babies….also I’m for birth control, but not by DRUGS, so I’m against forced birth control by that dangerous form, and I’m not religious in the least. …..I’m surprised all these supposed “health” proponents would be glad to put fake hormones into their systems.
The company can sell whatever they like but the company’s employees should be given the same FREEDOM to decide for themselves if they want to buy contraceptives or not.
ie no-one is forcing anyone to use contraception. But your religion is interfering with my freedom to choose contraception if I am your employee and you refuse to allow it. I’m sick to death of people sqawking about how their religion is being interfered with. Its absurd. Do as you choose. Contraception is not illegal in this country.
Great response. It should be available, but the employees don’t have to use it or buy it.
I totally agree!
“Do as you chose”. Unless what I choose doesn’t pay for your birth control pills, right? Buy them yourself and we won’t be squawking about our religion being interfered with.