Soy: Soul Food or Spiritual Sham?

Continued from page 1

The ayurvedic doctors are not the only anti-bean voices. The Platonic Academy of ancient Greece employed a rigorous spiritual program, meant to elevate the mind from the body and its emotions and achieve immortal reunion with God (hence our use of the word platonic to indicate friendship free of emotional involvement). Legend has it that students were only admitted into the Platonic Academy if they agreed to refrain from eating beans.

In the West, however, the bean-alternatives are not dharma-friendly satvic foods, but a host of fast-food and junk. Given that choice, shouldn't the spiritually inclined choose tofu over a Twinkie, a food so processed that one can hardly make a guess what's in it? Not necessarily.

An argument can be made that soy, especially in the form of tofu, isn't particularly good for you, and it certainly isn't unprocessed. That argument goes this way: Tofu is made by cooking soybeans into a mush, then placing them in cheesecloth like sacks and squeezing to remove the creamy tofu from the husk of the soybeans. The tofu is then poured into moulds with a hardening agent, traditionally a liquid called nigari made from pouring water through large bags of seasalt. Thus, tofu is an extremely refined product, about as bad as bleached, chemically-processed white flour.

Don't get me wrong. I don't question soy's health advantages. For vegetarians like me, it can be a virtual one-stop-shop in terms of nutritional benefits. Young soybeans, like the edamame that is a popular street-snack in Japan, also happen to be delicious.

There are plenty of soy products--White Wave's Silk soy milk among them--that use whole soybeans, and are touted as "raw" food. But even many of these are often transformed, using a beauty chest of flavorings, preservatives, sweeteners, emulsifiers and synthetic nutrients, into what has been called a "New Age Cinderella." The more American soy barons like Steve Demos integrate soy into the American palate, the farther it seems to stray from the path of enlightenment.

However, it wasn't taste on which my father's soy journey was founded. It was his search for the fountain of youth. An American friend unwittingly added fodder to Dad's fire by raving about soy's isoflavonoids, which, the friend said, have reversed the aging process in laboratory rats. Encouraged, Dad bought several packets of "tofu pups", a soy version of hot dogs eaten by vegetarians who, whether as a gesture of patriotism or perhaps pointed dissent, want to eat a meat alternative to America's most famous food. Dad's motivation was less clear, as he had never eaten hot dogs before--nor was he likely to, given that we are a vegetarian family. The only statement he made about his sudden passion for tofu pups was his announcement that "the French call their hot dogs chien chaud."

The tofu version of the chien chaud, however, proved to be staggeringly bland, even after we dressed it up with ketchup, salsa and mustard. The tofu ham was even worse and the tofu bologna took the cake for the worst tasting soy product we had ever eaten. So, there we were, left with three packets of tofu slices in flavors that nobody wanted to touch.

No doubt, there are ways to render soy palatable--edamame is one example, as are the equally delicious soy nuts--and it's true that foods that are considered good for you generally taste bad--or at least not as good as those that kill you. But if you ask me, soy's spiritual angle may be that it will cause you to renounce culinary pleasure and the world altogether and thereby achieve Nirvana.