history of soy yogurt, soy acidophilus milk and other ... - SoyInfo Center

and partially to support his work. Prior to World War II he
would fl y to the Philippines about once a year, do 12 to 15
thyroid surgeries a day for two to three weeks, give half of
his income to the hospital there, then return to America with
the balance. In 1942 he and his brother bought the local
hospital in Mt. Vernon where he worked; his son Clarence
came in to manage, renovate, and expand it. Miller was the
only surgeon in Knox County (population 35,000).
“At his Mt. Vernon soy dairy, Miller was always the fi rst
one to start the day’s work. One day, while experimenting
with a new formula, he cut off end of his fi nger in a food
grinder. He calmly picked up the severed part, walked into
his offi ce, and sewed it back on.
“During the years he spent introducing soyfoods to
America, Dr. Miller was one of the most active supporters
of the American Soybean Association, a regular speaker
at conventions and contributor of articles to the Soybean
Digest. His fi rst speech was “The Role of the Soybean in
Human Nutrition” (1940) and his fi rst article “Soybeans and
the Orient” (1943), was followed by “Feeding the World
with Soya” (1946), “Survey of Soy Foods in East Asia”
(1948), and others. Then in September 1958 he was made
an honorary member of the Association and awarded a gold
medal.
“By the late 1930s the seeds that Dr. Miller had planted
in East Asia began to sprout. It is interesting to note that most
of the remarkable expansion of interest in and production
of soymilk that has taken place throughout Asia during the
last half of the twentieth century can trace its origins directly
back to the work of Dr. Miller.
“While Dr. Miller was in Shanghai, an Adventist named
Howard Hoover had come and learned the soymilk process,
then started his own soy dairy and health food plant in a
mission school in Canton in about 1938. This was the fi rst
offshoot.
“In 1940 Mr. K.S. Lo of Hong Kong asked Hoover if
he would help him set up a plant. Hoover got approval from
Miller, then went to Hong Kong and designed Lo’s fi rst
plant. [Note: K.S. Lo recalls the origin of has company quite
differently; we accept his version of the story]. By 1940
Lo’s Hong Kong Milk Factory was making homogenized
soymilk and selling it in natural and chocolate fl avors, like
dairy milk, in standard half-pint bottles sealed with a paper
cap and hood. The soymilk was sweeter and a little thinner
than Miller’s and had more of the natural (so-called beany)
fl avor, which the Chinese prefer. By 1942, when the Pacifi c
War broke out, Lo’s company had gone broke. But in 1945,
after the war, the company reopened as the Hong Kong Soya
Bean Products Co., Ltd, and reintroduced their product, now
called Vitasoy, not as a milk substitute, but as the world’s
fi rst soymilk soft drink. By 1974 Vitasoy passed Coca Cola
to become Hong Kong’s best selling soft drink, with sales of
150 million bottles a year. In the meantime many other large
soymilk plants had started up in Singapore, Malaysia, and
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 174
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Thailand.
“In 1948 the Chinese Quartermaster Department, with
the help of Dr. Miller’s son, Willis, set up the largest soymilk
plant in the world in Shanghai, using a process patterned
after that used in Ohio, to make spray-dried soymilk. Costing
over $1,000,000, it had a capacity of 5 tons of dry soymilk
every 12 hours. The dried soymilk would be mixed with
puffed rice, pressed into wafers, and packed into cans, then
opened in the fi eld and soaked with hot water for rations.
The plant was completed and ready for operation (Dr. Miller
was at the dedication ceremony) just prior to the Communist
takeover of Shanghai in 1949.
“Research and Work Around The World (1949-1977):
In 1949, at age 70, Dr. Miller accepted the invitation of the
Adventist church to take over the direction of the Shanghai
Sanitarium and reestablish a soy dairy there. China was in
the throes of revolutionary war and Shanghai was still held
by the Nationalist forces. A daring pilot dropped Miller at
the besieged Shanghai airport, hardly pausing to stop. But
Shanghai fell to the Communists in May 1949; Miller was
soon evacuated, and returned to America.
“In 1950 Dr. Miller’s second wife died. Shortly
thereafter he decided to sell his Mt. Vernon business. There
was the increasing pressure of running a food plant and
although sales were good ($1.25 million gross in 1950)
profi ts were only $120,000 due to high taxes. He wanted to
devote more of his time to research and medicine. Although
offered a large sum of money by a private company outside
the Adventist denomination, he decided to divide the
company into two parts, the meat analogs and the soymilk
plus related products, and sell these to Adventist-run fi rms.
In June 1950 he sold the meat-analog part of his business
(gluten meats, nut loaves, frankfurters, etc.) to Worthington
Foods in Worthington, Ohio, a private company owned
by Adventist laymen that had been making meat analogs
since 1939. They bought the patents, recipes and formulas,
equipment, technology, and good will that went with Miller’s
meat analog business. Most of these analogs contained no
soy. Worthington kept the brand name “Miller’s” for several
years thereafter as they sold Miller’s Cutlets, Miller’s Burger,
Miller’s Stew, Vege-Links, and the like. Willis Miller worked
with Worthington for some time after the sale.
“In early 1951, Dr. Miller sold the rest of his business
at a very low price (book value) to Loma Linda Foods of
Riverside, California. This sale included the Mt. Vernon
land, buildings, equipment, technology, and recipes and
formulas for soymilk, canned fresh green soybeans,
Vege-Cheese (a canned tofu cottage cheese) and related
products. All these products continued to be produced in
Ohio. Loma Linda Foods, an integral part of the Seventhday
Adventist Church, was founded in 1906 and had run
a plant in Riverside making meat analogs, soymilk, and
other foods since 1936. Dr. Miller had always believed that
the process for making soymilk was not something that he