What Is Soy Protein Isolate and Is It Bad For You?

Between the portions, grams, percentages, tiny as heck print, and fifty-plus nicknames for sugar, reading a nutrition label can make anyone feel like they're decoding a lot of gibberish.But if you're vegan or start swooning anytime a menu features the Impossible Burger, there's one term of nutritional mumbo jumbo you should probably know: soy protein isolate (SPI). That's why we called on Eat This, Not That! go-to nutritionists Jonathan Valdez, R.D.N., owner of Genki Nutrition and spokesperson for the New York State Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and Lisa Richards CNC, nutritionist and founder of The Candida Diet to explain what the SPI is, and whether or not it's healthy.What is soy protein isolate?At risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, SPI is protein from soybeans that's been isolated from all the other ingredients in soy. "It's what remains when you take soybeans and strip all the sugars, fiber, and other natural vitamins and minerals from them, leaving only the protein" says...