The Whole Soy Story

Dear Kaayla,
I’ve read your warnings about soy formula and wonder how the formulas on the market differ from soy formulas used for centuries in Japan and China.
SP

Dear SP,

Soy formula was never used traditionally in Asia. Babies that couldn’t be breast fed by their birth moms were either given to a wet nurse or fed a homemade dairy formula. Soy formula was first developed in China in the late 1920s and 1930s. I found that late date hard to believe until I got a hold of some 1936 and 1938 articles from the Chinese Medical Journal. Historian William Shurtleff of the Soy Center in Lafayette, CA, tells us that first person to manufacture soy formula in China was an American, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary named Dr. Harry W. Miller.

Dear Kaayla,
People in Asia have been eating soy for 10,000 years. So how could there possibly be a problem?
GT

Dear GT,

This is a myth perpetuated by the soy industry. Soy has been a food in China for a little more than 2000 years. Farmers grew soybean plants only as “green manure” — as a cover crop plowed under to enrich the soil. Soy was a fertilizer, not a food. The ancient Chinese originally developed the technique for making soybean paste (best known by the Japanese term miso) to preserve protein-rich animal foods. This process was first applied to soybeans and grains in the second century BC at the earliest and appeared in Japan around 500 AD. Legend holds that tofu was invented in China in 164 BC and came to Japan in the eighth century AD. Natto entered the food supply around 1000AD and tempeh no earlier than the 1600s.