Please Pass the…Industrial Waste?!

About ten years ago, I switched from nonorganic cow’s milk to soy milk because I couldn’t handle the thought of those poor cows squished together in overcrowded factory farms, and I couldn’t afford the happy, organic milk with the cow dancing on the label.

Then about six years ago, I stopped drinking soy milk when I found out that soy protein isolate, the form of soy used in many processed food products today, was originally an industrial waste product. How did an industrial waste product become a popular health food? It was transformed through a lot of manipulative marketing and corporate/government collusion.

Not everyone bought the hype, including Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD, who published “Tragedy and Hype: The Third International Soy Symposium” in Nexus Magazine in 2000. Read the entire article to find out how soy protein isolate, the “food processors’ ugly duckling,” became “a New Age Cinderella.”

Samantha Prust

Samantha Prust is a freelance writer, editor, and owner of Your Editor On Call in Fort Collins, Colorado. She can be contacted at YourEditorOnCall@gmail.com.

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