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Soybeans, the controversy continues.

© Bob Ewing

I have just come in from looking over our tomatoes. The roma plants are bursting with fruit and the beefsteak is coming along nicely. The weather has been cool and damp, so I've had to keep a close eye on the evening' temperatures. I have a tarp handy, just in case it gets too cold. It'll take another week or so, providing we get enough sun for them to ripen. I'll use some of the romas to make a tomato sauce for my baked beans. I do enjoy beans. As a vegetarian they are a staple and one food I'd reccomend to anyone.

Last week's article gave a quote from Bill Mollison to the effect that soybeans were an unhealthy food. I expressed my concern as a vegetarian about this statement and began to explore it. The following is a further quote from Moillison's speech:

"Soy beans, too, have a powerful anti-nutritional factor which prevents the uptake of protein. So they have to be cooked for six or seven hours. There's hardly any other food which is that poisonous. So they are a nasty little poisonous commercial seed. A little bit is left over, a tiny fraction, 0.005%, is used in health food shops for what is rather a risky food; if they haven't rinsed it enough, you will get a protein deficiency out of that. People who make tofu cook it the minimal time. There are plenty of beans without these factors, but they are not much used. But soy beans have to be grown to paint your cars, and that leaves an awful lot of soy residue, and they make up a large part of the feed industry for chickens and pigs, poor things. I always said that I don't trust anybody who voluntarily eats beans."

Let's take a look at how tofu is made. Now, for argument's sake, it is true that growing soybeans ahs become a major industry and that it is possible that when an activity achieves this level of market penetration then corners may be cut for the sake of profit and traditional ways may be abandoned. Mollison is not the only one to express concerns about soybeans, however, in this case the concern is about a particular brand, not soybeans, in general.

I think the key to this situation may well rest in the final sentence: " I always said that I don't trust anybody who voluntarily eats beans." Here, he and I part company, although I expect it is a tongue and cheek comment, meant to get you to think about what you are doing, rather than a direct attack on that wonderful food. On a final note preparing beans is a fairly simple task. Beans are expensive and healthy. I just wish the echo of Mollison's comments would go away, it reflects something I've heard before, but can't recall or find where. If you have any knowledge about this soybean dilemma, please let me know and I will publish your, fully accredited information ,in a future article.

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