Yahoo! News:

Eating soy can help keep your blood vessels free of plaque, but popping a pill that contains soy antioxidants won't do much good, new research in monkeys suggests.

U.S. investigators found that female monkeys who ate a diet in which all protein came from soy showed fewer signs of artery-clogging (that is, atherosclerosis) than monkeys who consumed all of their protein from milk.

However, supplementing milk protein diets with soy ingredients called isoflavones - antioxidants thought to confer much of soy's beneficial effects - appeared to do nothing to reduce the risk of atherosclerosis.

The researchers "could not show that the addition of soy isoflavones to (milk protein) would make it like soy," Dr. Thomas B. Clarkson of Wake Forest University in North Carolina, who was not an author of the study, told Reuters Health.

All of the monkeys had undergone surgery to remove their ovaries, in order to simulate the process of menopause.

In women, the sharp drop in estrogen following menopause is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Many studies have demonstrated that Asian populations, which consume far more soy than Western populations as a whole, have lower rates of heart disease--suggesting that this dietary difference might play a role.

And soy-based diets have been linked to lower levels of artery-clogging LDL cholesterol.

It's interesting to note that soy is one of the fourteen foods that will change your life, according to the new book "SuperFoods Rx."

-Tim