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

FDA approval. It essentially put the burden of proof on
the FDA. The actual language of the Act makes “amazing
reading. The Act is a watershed event for the health food
industry in the USA. “If the soybean isofl avones are handled
correctly (and I am not divulging exactly what that means),
the regulatory and safety issues will be greatly minimized.
It becomes feasible to make and market the product. A
company’s risk is diminished, for example, by appropriate
use of warning statements.
Audax is fully booked at this point. He has more orders
than he can handle. Up to this time, he has been making only
pilot plant quantities. If all goes well, Audax will be making
commercial quantities within the next 4 months. At that time
he will be looking for new customers. Their fi rst product
will be Genistone, which is a soy extract; approximately
50% of the content of the product is soy isofl avones. Of
those isofl avones, approximately 80% contain genistin. It
will be sold as a dry powder and sell for about $2,000 per
kg of isofl avone content. At his price, the 25 mg of total
isofl avones in a typical serving of tofu would be worth about
$0.05 (5 cents). He feels that this price can drop quite a bit if
he is processing hundreds of tons a day of defatted soybean
meal. He thinks he will have the capacity to do that, because
he is now working with a large, local soybean crusher.
His main plan for marketing the product is to sell it to
food processors who would add it to food products (such
as soy yogurt or tofu) at levels with valuable biological
benefi ts; he does not plan to sell it as a supplement to avoid
the risks of people overdosing. One problem with adding soy
isofl avones to other products is that they have a bitter fl avor.
However since very small amounts will be added to foods,
they may not be noticeable in the fi nal product.
He is using defatted soybean meal as his starting
material from which to extract the soy isofl avones. Thus he is
using the protein fraction of the soybean rather than the lipid
fraction (incl. soy molasses). Isofl avones are closely bound
with proteins. The reason he is not using the lipid fraction
or soy molasses is proprietary. He has noticed that his byproduct
(defatted soybean fl our containing no isofl avones)
has a better taste than most soy fl our (and maybe better
stability) and he is looking for ways to sell it as a valueadded
product. He is currently adding it to chicken feed.
If you look at all the isofl avones in the whole soybean,
50-60% is daidzin. But genistein has the greatest biological
activity. So he set out to make a product that is rich in
genistin. However his product, Genistone, contains genistin
as its largest constituent. This is because genistin is
hydrolyzed in the gut to genistein, which is then absorbed
into the bloodstream.
Charles believes that genistein, at a high enough
dose, can stop the growth of cancer in humans. There is
scientifi c evidence that genistein has cytotoxic activity at
a high enough dose; all the major anti-cancer medicines
(chemotherapeutic agents) these days are cytotoxins. Put in
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 418
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the right place, they kill both cancer- and non-cancer cells.
Genistein has some other properties that make it attractive
therapeutically; at a very low dose, it may stop the growth of
cancer without killing the cancer cells. This dose is roughly
that obtained by eating 6 servings of tofu per day. There is
also some evidence of anti-metastatic activity, i.e. it may
prevent the cancer from metastasizing, or spreading to other
parts of the body–at much lower doses than the cytotoxic
activity.
Soy isofl avones have some very potent biological
activities. They are an inhibitor of a group of cell
transduction proteins called the protein tyrosine kinases,
which modify cell division, cell signalling mechanisms,
etc. At a high dose (e.g. ten times the desirable dose) there
could be some problems. Look at the market for estrogen
replacement therapy. Estrogens are great; they do everything
that genistein does except they cause cancer instead of
preventing it. Genistein does all the things that estrogens
do and it prevents cancer. About 6 months ago Merck
introduced a drug named Fosamax that prevents osteoporosis
and increases bone density. They billed it as one of their big
blockbuster drugs for the future, with sales projected at $1.5
billion a year. It was selling very well, but just last week
Merck sent out a “Dear doctor” letter to 150,000 physicians
notifying them that one serious side effect was extreme
abdominal pain. 36 women have been hospitalized. Sales
have started to drop.
What will prevent companies like ADM, Merck, or
Sandoz/Novartis from competing with Audax? Nothing.
Talk with Steve Buchheim, marketing manager for
soy applications at ADM. 1998. March 6. Steve thinks that
Audax never brought their product to market because they
were unable to get the soy solids they needed. It was NOT
because of any problems or potential problems related to the
FDA or regulation. Address: Director of Research, Audax,
Inc., 1385 Bear Creek Road, Leitchfi eld, Kentucky 42754.
Phone: 502-242-3791.
1097. Montanaro, Pamela. 1996. Attending the First National
Soybean Workshop in Cuba (Interview). SoyaScan Notes.
April 15. Conducted by William Shurtleff of Soyfoods
Center.
• Summary: Pam Montanaro, Coordinator of the Cuba
Campaign Department of Global Exchange, just returned
from 2 weeks in Cuba. She led an alternative medicine
group during the fi rst week. While there, she attended the
First National Soybean Workshop (Primer Taller Nacional
Soya), 2-day meeting held on 11-12 April 1996 at the Food
Research Institute outside Havana. It was attended by
about 200 Cubans, and many important Cubans were there,
including Jesu Montané Oropesa, a top advisor to Fidel
Castro, and Vilma Espín, head of the Federation of Cuban
Women (Federation de Mujeres Cubanos, FMC). One of
the founders of the Cuban revolution in the 1950s, she is