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

(fi ltered water, whole organic soybeans*), organic evaporated
cane juice crystals*, organic peaches*, unmodifi ed tapioca
starch, unmodifi ed corn starch, calcium carbonate, natural
fl avors, lactic acid (from vegetable source), annatto (color),
live yogurt cultures (L. acidophilus, bifi dus, L. bulgaricus,
and S. thermophilus). * = Grown without the use of synthetic
pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers.
Wt/Vol., Packaging, Price: 12 oz (340 gm) plastic bottle.
How Stored: Refrigerated.
Nutrition: Per 8 fl . oz (227 gm): Calories 200-210, calories
from fat 25, total fat 3 gm (4% 5% daily value; saturated
fat 0 gm), cholesterol 0 mg, sodium 75 mg (0%), total
carbohydrate 34-36 gm (dietary fi ber 0 gm, sugars 29-31
gm), protein 7 gm. Vitamin 0%, calcium 30%, iron 0%,
vitamin C 0-2%. Provides 38 mg of natural soy isofl avones.
Percent daily values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.
New Product–Documentation: First Cultured Soy Drink
label (see next page) (Apricot Mango) sent by Ted Nordquist
of WholeSoy & Co and dated in his computer 2001. April 11.
Leafl et sent by Patricia Smith from Natural Products
Expo in Anaheim, California. 2002. March. “An incredibly
delicious cultured drink. Live active cultures. Organic
soybeans. Dairy free. Excellent source of calcium.
Cholesterol free. New!” Shows 12 oz. plastic bottles of
the fl our fl avors. On the back: Our process is unique. Why
organic? The healthy soybeans. Ingredients for each fl avor.
Nutrition facts.
Talk with Ted Nordquist. 2012. Sept. 22. When making
cups of Creamy Cultured Soy at the Morningstar plant in
Fullerton–”we were too small for them.” The plant manager,
who was very nice, told Ted that Ted’s volume was so small
that it was going to be very diffi cult in that plant to give
Ted a consistent product. So Ted started looking for another
place, and he ended up at Super Store Industries, which
initially had no bottling line when Ted started making his
soy yogurts there. Then Shane Donovan who was having
his GlenOaks Drinkable Yogurts made by Altadena in Los
Angeles, had the problem that Altadena was not serving
him well. So Kelly Olds, who at the time was president of
Super Store Industries (SSI), called Ted and asked Ted if
he would like to do bottled drinkable soy yogurts. “If you
would combine your volume with Shane Donovan’s volume,
we could install a bottling line at the SSI plant.” As always,
they would clean out between the run of dairy yogurt and the
run of soy yogurt. “You have to CIP and for Kosher Pareve
you have to let the machines rest 24 hours between dairy
and soy.” Ted said, yes, thank you. So Ted designed and
launched his fi rst line of WholeSoy smoothies (drinkable
cultured soy). This was the fi rst drinkable soy yogurt sold in
the United States. Note: The smoothies were fi rst launched as
WholeSoy Cultured Soy Drink.
1238. Nordquist, Ted. 2001. Making tofu the hard way in
Cheboksary, Russia (Interview). SoyaScan Notes. Aug. 28.
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 475
© Copyright Soyinfo Center 2012
Conducted by William Shurtleff of Soyfoods Center.
• Summary: Ted has just returned from two weeks (Aug.
4-18) in Russia working as a volunteer consultant to Soya-
Ch [pronounced SOYA-chee], a small tofu company in
Cheboksary, which is a city of about 340,000 people situated
on the Volga River about 650 km east of Moscow–a 14hour
train ride from Moscow. “They were great people
and I had a wonderful time.” He was sent there by ACDI/
VOCA, a volunteer overseas organization that uses American
tax dollars to send American consultants overseas to help
businesses that apply to VOCA for help. VOCA stands for
“Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance.” Website:
www.acdivoca.org.
The tofu company is: Soya-Ch Closed Joint Stock
Company, 42800 Chuvashia Republic, Cheboksary,
Kanashskoe shosse, 19, Russia. Phone: 8352/66-93-78 or 66-
92-69. Director: Alexeeva Anna Alexandrovna.
This tofu company was started in 1998 by Alexeeva, a
woman who had previously been hospitalized with severe
digestive problems. The doctors couldn’t fi gure out what her
problem was; she was near death. Fortunately, her closest
friend had read about soy, so in the hospital she stopped
consuming dairy products and started eating soyfoods. Her
symptoms quickly disappeared, which proved that she was
lactose intolerant. As soon as she got out of the hospital, she
started a company making tofu. She is now director and she
hired her husband, Alexeev Vaycheslav Konstantinovich,
as deputy director, and the son of her closest friend as
marketing director. They have 32 employees and make about
17 tonnes (metric tons) of tofu a year–which is not very
much.
They have two Russian-made SoyaCow USM-150 semicontinuous
systems. Each SoyaCow produces 150 liters/
hour of soymilk, so the two lines produce about 300 liters/
hour. The equipment is very poor quality (it does not use
the airless cold grind process so the soymilk has a beany
fl avor) and the process by which they make tofu is extremely
slow and ineffi cient because their instruction manuals are
so poorly written. Each line makes only about 16 kg/hour
of tofu. The equipment is made illegally in Russia with
no supervision or license from ProSoya Inc., Raj Gupta’s
company in Canada.
Soya-Ch produces plain tofu and fi ve types of fl avored
or seasoned tofu (with raisins, dried apricots, caraway, sea
tangle or laminaria {konbu, a type of sea vegetable}, or
salt). They call their tofu “soy cheese” and consumers buy it
and use it like cheese. They typically slice it and serve it on
bread; it is never pan-fried, deep-fried, sauteed, stir-fried, etc.
It retails for about 30% less than dairy cheese–which is its
most important selling point in Russia.
The company’s total tofu production is about 15,000 kg/
month; over 80% of this is plain tofu, which is sold in bulk
to a dairy which uses the tofu as an extender for their lowfat
dairy cheese. Of the remaining 20%: (1) About 30% is