The ingredient in almost everything you eat - Francesca Bot
In the 1930s, American industrialist
Henry Ford had one overwhelming obsession:
soybeans.
He extracted their oil to make enamel
for painting his cars.
He crushed them into powder
to make plastic parts.
And he encouraged American farmers
to grow as much of the plant as possible.
But he wasn’t just feeding soy
to machines.
At the Chicago World’s Fair,
he hosted a soy-centric feast.
The ingredient had been a staple
in Asian cuisine for centuries,
but Ford’s dinner— full of soy substitutes
for dairy, meat and wheat—
took the integration of soy
into food a step further.
Today, soy is in so many foods
that most people consume it every day
without even knowing it.
So what makes soybeans so versatile?
And is our global obsession
healthy or harmful?
Soybeans have been cultivated in Asia
as early as 5,500 years ago,
but since then they’ve spread
across the globe.
Part of soy’s success is that
the crop can be grown easily and cheaply
in variable conditions.
And once they’re grown,
soybeans have an incredibly high density
of proteins and fats;
ingredients which in recent years
have been used in everything
from mayonnaise to biodegradable plastic.
The ideal method
for separating these components
depends on what you’re trying to extract.
To isolate soy proteins, dehulled beans
are sometimes pressed through rollers
to create thin flakes, and then steeped
in water to draw out the proteins.
Alternatively, whole beans can be simply
soaked and ground
into a whitish, protein rich liquid.
In both cases, the resulting substance
can be used to make spongy foods
like tofu or filtered to produce soymilk.
And at the industrial scale,
these proteins can be used in various ways
to help make processed foods.
Soy fats may be even more versatile.
In one extraction method,
soybeans are dried, cleaned,
and then fed into an extruder.
This machine simultaneously heats
and presses the beans,
producing a liquid containing soy oil
and other fatty components.
By adding water and spinning the mixture,
components are separated into two parts:
refined soy oil for things like salad
dressing, and a substance called lecithin.
Lecithin is made of molecules
called phospholipids,
which have a phosphate head that attracts
water and a tail that attracts fats.
These features make phospholipids
excellent for blending ingredients
that naturally separate from each other.
This process is called emulsification
and soy lecithins are used
as an emulsifying agent
in a huge variety of foods.
For example, during chocolate production
phospholipids attach to both the fatty
components of the cocoa butter
and the water-soluble sugar particles,
making them easier to combine
into a smooth mixture.
A similar process happens
in powdered products
that need to be instantly rehydrated.
Soy lecithin bonds with the water
and helps the powder
disperse more quickly.
While there are other plants
we can process for lecithin and proteins,
soy’s mild taste
and widespread availability
have earned it a place
in thousands of food products.
But is it unhealthy to be eating
this much soy?
Not really.
Soybeans contain many of the essential
amino acids our bodies need,
making them one of the best ways
to get these proteins without eating meat.
And the beans’ fat content is largely
made up of so-called “good” fats—
poly and mono-unsaturated fatty acids,
which can decrease cholesterol
and reduce the risk of heart disease.
There are some compounds in soy
that may inhibit our body’s absorption
of various minerals.
And about 0.3% of the general population
has a soy allergy,
which can be severe in rare cases.
But for many people, the biggest complaint
about soy consumption
is the occasional increase in flatulence.
Outside our bodies however,
soy is much more worrying.
To accommodate the soy farms needed
for heavy industry,
processed foods and livestock feed,
huge swaths of land have been deforested.
Between 2006 and 2017, roughly
22,000 square kilometers of the Amazon
were cleared for soy production.
In some regions, this has also led
to the displacement of farmers
and indigenous communities.
So if we want to keep using soy
and all its byproducts,
we’ll need to find a way
to do it humanely and sustainably.
