Not just animal feed: Soybeans
Upon hearing that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) declared the year of 2016 as the “International Year of Pulses”, us Taiwanese (and probably lots of people in East Asia) immediately think of soybeans, right? Little did we know that they would announce that of all the different pulses of the world, soybeans (and also peanuts) were not included in the list!
Preposterous! No soybeans! How could soybeans not be included? They’re not only in our breakfast’s soybean milk, there’s also tofu, hard bean curd, and many other soybean related products, it’s extremely hard for Taiwanese to not consume anything that’s made from soybeans in any given day.
Soybeans are an original species of north China, so the Chinese started eating it a long time ago. In China soybean was called “菽”(shu) or “荏菽”(ren shu)in ancient literature. They started from simply cooking the beans to eat, as Confucius said, ‘Bean soup, and water to drink, while the parents are made happy, may be pronounced filial piety.’ (啜菽飲水盡其歡，斯之謂孝) During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, soybean was seen as one of the five main grains, with factories that made soybean products along with the invention of soybean fermentation.
When bean paste spread from China to Japan during the Tang dynasty, the Japanese invented a wide variety of bean pastes (miso) and nattō, their lives strongly tied together with soybeans and it’s other products.
Soybean milk and tofu (bean curd) were developed in the Han dynasty. According to the legend, soybean milk and tofu were invented by Liu An (劉安, 179–122 BC), the prince of Huainan. It was said that he ground and cook the soybean for his old, ill mother. Tofu was also invented by him. While he was trying to make medicines for eternal life, he accidentally dropped brine into soy milk. The proteins in soy milk condenses and becomes tofu. While it may be only a legend, people working in soy-processing industry in East Asia worship Liu An as their founding father.
The fruit of soybean is edible and can be pressed into oil, it’s young leaves also suitable for consumption, and it’s stalk and old leaves could be dried and used for fuel. In the story of the famous Seven Steps Verse, the “beanstalk” mentioned is the dried stalk of the soybean plant. In the story, Emperor Wen of Cao Wei (曹丕, Cao Pi) was jealous of his younger brother Cao Zhi (曹植) and trying to kill him. He ordered Cao Zhi to compose a verse within seven steps. Cao Zhi make a verse saying “Cook beans with bean stalk. Beans are crying in the pot: we are of the same origin, why killing each other in such a hurry?” While this story sounded nice, it is probably never happened. The verse was only seen in Shishuo Xinyu (世說新語, literally means A New Account of the Tales of the World) but not found in the Collective verses of Cao Zhi nor elsewhere.
In East Asia, even for people who don’t eat tofu or hard bean curd and don’t drink soybean milk, there’s one product impossible to not come in contact with: soy sauce. Some companies emphasize that their soy sauce is made of black beans, so is black bean different from soybean? As fate would have it, black beans are only a variety of soybeans with black skin. Taiwanese believe that black bean is better for the body, especially black bean with green cotyledons.
Although it’s common knowledge that soy sauce is made out of soybeans, however soy sauce started out as the liquid on top of meat sauce, so it was not vegetarian originally. However, meat was more expensive, only the elites and riches could afford meat; afterwards common people found out that the sauce atop of the fermented soybean paste taste good too, so they started from taking soy sauce atop of bean paste, later dedicate some soy paste to making soy sauce only. As for the edamame that we eat as snacks, those are immature soybeans in the pod. Edamame is a very popular snacks in Japan and Taiwan is the main exporter.
So why isn’t soybean included in the UN’s “International Year of Pulses”? The truth is that soybeans spread to Europe and the United States from China in the late 18th century, and because the few beans native to Europe such as chickpeas and lentils were difficult to digest and caused stomach gas, so beans (pulses) were considered food of the poor. In addition, they didn’t have factories that made bean products either, so consuming beans was generally harder for them. And so, soybeans weren’t considered of much importance; not until the food shortage caused by World War I at the start of the 20th century, and the outburst of cotton weevils in the United States in the 1920s, resulting in a sharp decline in the Americans’ source of cooking oil, it was then that they cast their eyes on soybeans that could be pressed for oil. Then came World War II, and with the need of meat when the United States joined the fray, they started to feed their animals with maize and soybean based feed, and restricting their activity space at the same time, and so reducing the breeding period by half to two thirds, starting what is coined “intensive farming (factory farms)”. Though intensive feeding provides cheap meat for everyone, the resulting large amount of animal feces polluting the environment, and superbugs that are born from the usage of antibiotics to prevent the animals from falling ill in dense living quarters, however, are things that could not have been foresaw. With that said, none of that is on soybeans or maize!
