July 28, 2017 • 40 mins
Tofu's multi-millennia history may or may not include an attempt at making an immortality elixir. Anney and Lauren take on the history, science, health, and environmental impact of tofu.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Food Stuff. I'm Annie Reeve and
I'm Lauren vocal Bomb, and today for all of our
vegetarian friends and frenemies, and also for every single one
of you who wrote in with a listening request. We're
talking about tofu. Yes, well, and tofu is a little
bit more specific. Like people were like, hey, you guys
just talked about an organ meat for like an hour. Uh,
(00:31):
could could you talk about something vegetarian? And we were like, yeah,
that's totally were absolutely, well, do that. We'd love to
I'd like a vegetable. Yeah, I love vegetables. You like tofu?
I love tofu two, especially when it's a deep fried,
at which point it's you know, not necessarily a health
food anymore. But I've always liked the taste and texture
(00:52):
of tofu. My mom actually started me out eating it
when I was maybe like five or six. Um, she
was kind of a crazy hippie out Wow. My family
was the opposite. We were not allowed to have tofu
in my house. What oh my goodness. Hated it so much.
But I had this like really amazing tofu when I
was in China drinks sense, And I've been trying to
(01:13):
recreate it ever since, I think it actually might have been, um,
the dried skin like tofu skin. Okay, what was the
dish like? It was like it was served in a
spiral um and it was thin noodles. What it looked
like thin noodles And I don't know if anybody remembers
his bobbi um packages, Yeah, it looks like that. But
it was tofu and it was like textured on the
(01:34):
outside and it was so good. Oh man, it was
so good. And I've tried and tried and I got
kind of close recently. Um, I'm still looking. If any
listener heroes are out there and know what I'm talking about,
that would be yeah. Yeah, if you have a recipe,
send it on it. So tofu what is it? Um
tofu or dofu and Chinese pinion is coagulated soy milk
(02:00):
that's pressed into blocks. And we will do a whole
other episodes on soy and or soy milk, probably because
they are kind of big topics. Yeah, pretty huge. Um.
Sometimes almonds or black beans are used in place of soybeans.
I can't say I've personally seen this, but but but yeah,
Traditionally it's a it's soybeans. Yes, the literal translation of
(02:23):
tofu is being curd, but it's a Japanese word. Yes. Um.
It also goes by the equally appetizing bean cheese or
bean curd cheese, which is actually a super good scientific
description for it um but does not sound tasty. No,
it doesn't bean cheese. It can come in two main types, fresh,
(02:47):
which can be like soft or silken, extra soft firm
our extra firm, which sounds like mattresses now that I'm
saying it aloud mattress descriptors. Yes, or it can um
uh processed, which includes pickled, fermented, which you might know
is stinky, tofu um dried, frozen or fried. And then
(03:09):
there's also like byproducts such as tofu skin swipehulp, tofu burgers,
to pot ducts, to noodles, to cheese, tofu cream cheese,
tofu ice cream. You've seen the aisles, I'm sure, yes,
aisles might be a lot, but but but well, items
on multiple aisles. Yes, they're pervasive there throughout the store
(03:30):
and retail of tofu in the United States made two
hundred and seventy four million dollars as there are some
two hundred and forty five thousand manufacturers competing in the
tofu industry, the largest ones in Japan, producing about fifty
tons per day. Wow, that is a lot of tofu.
I can't conceive of that much tofu. I'm like looking
(03:52):
at the size of this room and going way more
than this room. And that's about all all my imagination
has for you today. It's a popular red during cuisine,
as you probably knew, um, in part because it's pretty
low key flavor wise, so you can customize it. It
can be savory or sweet or anything in between. That
also can be used in smoothies. Um. It's pretty low calorie,
(04:13):
low fat, but high and iron and protein. Depending on
the thing you use for coagulating, like calcium or magnesium sulfate,
it can also be high in either of those things,
calcium or magnesium. Sure. Um. But speaking of coagulants, let's
talk a little bit about those things and how tofu
is made. Yes, let's start about that. So all you
(04:36):
really need in order to make tofu is soybeans and
water that have been made into soy milk, plus a coagulant,
and traditionally speaking, that coagulant is negari, which is an
extract of salty sea water. You evaporate that brine to
let the sodium chloride the table salt crystallize, then take
that out, leaving you with what's essentially a liquid solution
of magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, and maybe a few weather
(04:58):
mineral salts. You can also evaporate this to get a
powdered form if you so desire, and some people do.
These and other agents that are used as coagulants, like
um like like acids or enzymes, work on the soy
milk in the same way that various coagulants work on
regular milk in order to make it clump up into
yogurt or cheese or et cetera. You can see our
(05:19):
yogurt episode for a full description of this, but essentially
here's what's going on. So soy milk is an emulsion
of proteins and fats in water. An emulsion means that
these molecules are negatively charged, which means they're kind of
keeping each other at arms length. You know, they're they're
giving each other space. And the coagulant works by acidifying
the soy milk just enough to change the molecular charge
(05:40):
of the protein and fat molecules within Suddenly they're all
like like come in for a hug, body doing um,
and they clump up, thus creating solid curds of protein
and fat and liquid whey which is water and some
water soluble proteins. In these our modern times, most large
scale manufacturers skip the seaber line and just use straight
(06:01):
magnesium chloride or calcium sulfate a k a. Gypsum because
they might be making like three point five to fifty
tons of to for per day, at which point you
know you're you're looking to streamline um and nagari, being
a natural product, varies in its chemical composition, so the
second half of this equation is the soy milk. Uh.
(06:23):
To get soy milk, a factory will usually purchase dried
soybeans because they're cheaper to work with than fresh due
to the shipping weight and refrigeration costs and possibility of
spoilage that you get with fresh soybeans, and the the
basic process of making this into soy milk goes as such. Um.
You rehydrate to your dried soybeans by soaking them for
a few hours, then mash slash put um along with
(06:45):
some water to form a slurry that is the industry
term slurry. M m m m m. You heat that's
slurry to relax some of the soy proteins within it,
then separate out the solid bean pulp from the liquid
soy milk. Okay, And there are so so many ways
(07:05):
in which to accomplish this, and a huge amount of
industrial research goes into the best and or cheapest ways.
How the soy beans are treated in making soy milk
for tofu will hugely impact the flavor, like beanie or
funky versus kind of neutral that the color yellowed versus
a kind of pure white um, and the texture kind
of grainy versus smooth and silken. So do you haul
(07:27):
the beans before grinding? Do you use traditional Japanese stone
grinders or something a little bit more modern, although probably
also Japanese. Do you separate the solids from the liquids
prior to heating or afterwards? Do you concentrate the soy
milk after it's separated and before it's coagulated? If you
ever want a rabbit hole of food production techniques, Tofu
is so happy to provide so many questions, so much
(07:51):
research to do. Oh yes, but Once you've got your
soy milk, however you so choose to do it, you
let your coagulant make some soy curt at that point.
If you're going for very softer silk and tofu, you're
you're pretty much done. If you're going for firmer tofu,
you press the kurds to remove as much way as
you so choose. And um, tofu was packaged along with
(08:12):
some of that way to keep it moist and fresh. Ah,
So that's why I always with it like a liquid. Yeah, okay,
you can pour that off and I don't know, like
drink it or use it in cooking or whatever you want. Yeah,
add some protein. I have to say. I thought there'd
be more ingredients in tofu, and I don't know why
I thought that, but um, apparently it's you can make
(08:35):
it yourself. And it's my personal wouldn't say easy, but
definitely within the realm of doing sure, like like like
labor intensive perhaps, Yeah, And I just don't have things
like you need a cheese cloth and some kitchen weights,
and I don't have these things. But we can get
you some cheese cloth. Any we can get you some
cheese cloth by by four o'clock. Okay, okay, okay, that's exciting, okay, okay. Anyway,
(09:03):
I was going to go into like how to make it,
but it's pretty much the same as what Lauren just discussed,
but on a much smaller kitchen scale, and you can
look up the recipes. There's so many recipes online. You
basically you make your own soy milk and then yeah,
you put in a coagulant and just wait for it
to to form up with some lights and you know,
(09:26):
just just yeah, press it, you know. I mean again,
it depends on what you want to do. And you
can make silky tofu, you can make firm tofu. It's
a little bit more intensive than than yogurt, and then
it's slightly more than stirring because there are beans involved.
But but it's really the same principle pretty much, which
I had literally no idea about before we did the
research for this episode. I know, it's just one of
those things that never occurred to me to try to
(09:47):
make my own tofu. But it sounds um like it
can be finicky, but the rewards are great, yes, if
you succeed. So for all those kitchen adventurers out there,
why don't give it a try. Yeah, if you make
your own, let us know, let us know how it's
different from store brand tofoo. Yeah. Absolutely, So that's kind
(10:07):
of the what is it portion? Um, Let's talk about
some history, but first a break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So Tofu,
(10:31):
despite being known by its Japanese name, most likely originated
in China sometime around two six to two twenty BC.
That's the Han dynasty. If you're more familiar with the
dynastic version of timekeeping in China, Yes, and this is
the production of it. Probably originated there. Then it was
(10:52):
probably discovered much earlier by accident, as a lot of
these fermentty type things are yes a pot. Other story
goes that around this time, a chef living in northern
China was testing out ways to spice up the popular
dish of soy bean soup by adding some unrefined sea
salt that had some naturally occurring coagulating nagari. But to
(11:18):
his surprise, is not to ours, uh, it curdled into
this gel tofu like thing that people loved. It was
delicious and sort of a fun. Spin off of this
story goes that a man was trying to fix something
for his parents who had lost their teeth and they
could only eat soft food. So he purated some cooked
soy beans, but the parents to spit take after trying it,
(11:41):
saying that there were too many solid bits of bean
in there. So the sun tried again and he passed
the soup through some mesh. But that still didn't says
by the parents, who thought it had no flavor. No,
so he's on his last leg, and he reheated the
mixture and added some salt, and then he let it
cool and it for armed the tofu like jelly that
(12:02):
was probably tofu ish. And finally his parents were not
only satisfied, but very satisfied. And there you go. Another
legend that tells the tale of Lord Luan, a prince
of the Haunt dynasty, and according to this, he invented
tofu in and around one BC. Okay, yeah, this fellow
(12:26):
was on the hunt for an immortality elix sir, so
he ventured alone off into the mountains to create this potion.
Um but alas he wasn't successful. Let me know of Hey,
whole tangent could happen right now, but it won't. His
experiments deadly behind a soft white substance, which he got
(12:48):
the pheasants to try, of course, because you could been poison. Yeah,
he didn't want to die, but they declared it delicious
and non poisonous. Um. And this newly discovered non immortality
alixir was named tofu or probably yes, but yes exactly. However,
this story didn't pop up until about a thousand years
(13:12):
after it was supposed to have happened, so historians think
it's probably not true. Uh. And this is sort of
a thing that sometimes in history, a popular invention story
goes to a popular historical figure. Apparently it's all I mean,
I like the immortality. Oh sure yeah. Another theory claims
(13:34):
that the Chinese picked up milk curdling techniques from the
Mongolians or the East Indians um. And the crux of
this argument is pretty much words. The Chinese word do
fu is very close to the Mongolian word rufu, which
translates to spoil to rotten milk. Yes, there's actually not
that much evidence for any of those stories, not surprisingly really,
(13:59):
but those are like three popular origin stories of tofu,
since it was relatively simple and cheap to produce. However,
it originated, it became a favorite delicacy throughout China. There
are descriptions found in writings and poetry from the Song
and Yuan dynasty, which is nine sixty to twelve seventy
(14:21):
nine CE and twelve seventy one, respectively, and they indicate
that tofu production was by the most part standardized by
these times. Sudong Pole, a poet during the Song dynasty,
purportedly was inspired by his love of tofu to invent
the athlete named dish dung Po to fu sure. Sure.
(14:49):
It was also used in traditional medicine to do things
like clean your spleen and replenish your cheat. Huh spleen cleaning.
I could use a good spleen cleaning, I'm sure, very spleeny.
Ninth century Buddhist monks who were big fans of tofu
because they thought the vegetarian diet was better for the spirit,
(15:09):
introduced the soya plant to Japan and Korea, although they
could have been in either of those places or both
of those places for much longer. Probably wherever you were
making soy milk happen, yeah, or or making ground soy
soup products. Thought, for at first, I thought you were
(15:30):
saying like from the ground ground soy supposed to air
soyr fires. So I was like, oh, with our powers combined.
Tofu was first mentioned in UH nine document by tau
Ku Tofu the word that is. At the time, people
in China gave tofu the nickname vice Mayor's mutton because
(15:55):
of this story of this guy that was too poor
to afford mutton so he bought to instead. But I'm
pretty sure the point of that story was actually frugality
was a virtuous thing. He was doing it a good thing,
not not not like a not like Welsh rabbit, which
is just making fun of a number of levels of right, Okay,
I think it was positive, Like, yeah, he's making do
(16:17):
I think so. The first written record of a tofu
dish served in Japan describes an offering served in eleven
eight three c e. At the Kasuga Shrine and the
upper class of Japan. They adopted tofu fairly quickly, and
it was widely enjoyed by the fourteen hundreds. A Japanese
(16:38):
book published during the Edo period, which was sixteen or
three to eighteen sixty seven, had over one hundred foo
recipes in it. Yeah, and part of that was probably
related to the rise in acceptance of Buddhism. If we
go back over to China, during the Qing dynasty um
which was six to nineteen eleven, Emperor KHANSI reportedly gave
(16:59):
his officials locally and strongly flavored tofu in place of jade,
our gold, or the like while on an inspection tour
of southern China. I can't imagine expecting jade and getting
I can't say it would be upset necessarily defense on
now get the tofu was, and how hungry I was
at that current, Yes, but I just love that I
(17:23):
know I'll get them tofu be perfect. At the time,
tofu is mostly made in small shops using um similar
methods in both China and Japan all the way up
until the nineteen sixties. Yes, and then the Japanese Food
Research Institute made a set of recommendations aimed at standardizing
(17:45):
and modernizing tofu, including things like using calcium soul fate
as the thickener instead of nagari and using pressure cookers,
hydraulic presses centrifuges instead of doing everything annually. And as
you guess, the recommendations succeeded in speeding up tofu production.
(18:06):
But what effect did it have on the tofu exactly?
Some tofu producers refused to adopt it, thinking it negatively
impacted the flavor, and they still do everything by hand.
It's beautiful. I know. I want to do a taste test.
I do too. I want to know if you can
taste like any difference. I imagine you imagine you probably can. Yeah.
I would hope so, and I would guess. So. Maybe
(18:28):
one day, Lauren, we'll get we'll get a taste test,
we'll know the truth. We'll have to go to Japan. Well,
we'll just want to tell we'll have to tell your
boss that it's necessary. Absolutely, he won't be a largue.
I'm sure. The believed first written English use of the
word tofu, and it was spelled with a W at
this point. O w F you by an American, was
(18:50):
in a letter exchange between Englishman James Flint and Benjamin Franklin. Yeah,
bringing up in the tofy episode. Franklin had apparently been
on the hunt for what he called Chinese cheese since
reading about it in the writings of Domingo Fernandez Navarette.
(19:11):
His work. By the way, um Domingos work was first
published in sixteen sixty five, and it was translated into
English and seventeen o four, which is the first known
instance of tofu in an English language documentary. Written down
but but not okay right. Earlier in the sixteen hundreds,
Captain John Sarah's wrote of his time in Japan and
(19:32):
is thought to have been describing tofu with of cheese
they have plenty, butter they have none, Nor will they
eat any milk because they hold it to be as blood,
nor will they tame beast. So the cheese was probably
probably tofu because without taming beasts, I'd imagine that it
would be difficult to get Yeah, milk cheese. Yeah, And
(19:54):
I thought I wanted to include that just because I
thought it was interesting that the kind of sounds like
vegetarian is um our veganism, Yeah, because they won't have
any milk butter. Yeah. Yeah, interesting historical and also also
I just love that there was just no concept of
of a cradled product other than cheese. It's like, that's
(20:17):
that's what it is. This is a cheese thing. It
must be cheese. Yeah. Um. In the US, despite having
soybeans since the seventeen hundreds, um, and they were made
popular by Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush of the
eighteen hundred's. The first tofu company, by the way, opened
in eighteen seventy eight in San Francisco. Tofu wasn't really
(20:42):
that popular for a long time. There was a modest
bump after soldiers returned from World War Two, some of
them with Asian cuisine and some with Asian spouses. Um.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, soybeans were predominantly
grown as a cash crop to regenerate soil in between
crops um between useful crops exactly heavy scare quotes there,
(21:07):
they were very heavy um also as food for livestock
and to produce oil used in manufacturing are for culinary use,
especially as World War Two started blocking the trade of
other imported oils and fats. Yeah. By the nineteen fifties,
American soybean production nearly equal to Asian soybean production, and
(21:28):
by the nineteen sixties the US provided of the world supply. However,
it wasn't until the nineteen seventies that more mainstream stores
started offering tofu in response to the growing popularity of
global cuisines and also high meat costs plus their eyes
of vegetarianism and just general health awareness, tofu started to
(21:49):
gain popularity, and today the US is one of the
world's largest soybean producers. I think it's like openness, but
still the US consumes relatively low amounts of tofu compared
places like China, where tofu is a big part of
their culture. Oh yeah, there's all these beautiful legends about it.
(22:11):
I mean, other than that those origin stories, right, Yeah.
A popular one is about a poor but pretty lady
who is known as being curd beauty what tofu she Sha,
which comes from a story about a woman named she
Sha who was so beautiful fish froze and sank to
their deaths the site of her, and thus her name
(22:33):
came to mean beauty. So yeah, being curd beauty. Wow,
that's some like like collateral kind of kind of stuff.
That's intense, intense beauty. I can just imagine walking by
the river and the fish died. Sorry, I didn't mean it,
I can't go anywhere. Um. A man who sexually harasses
(22:56):
a woman is said to be eating her tofu. Yeah,
it sounds pretty dirty. Has something to do with a
beautiful tofu shopkeeper who men would keep coming to visit
the shop, less for the tofu and more for the woman.
Oh okay, I get it. Okay, that's not as dirty
as it sounds. No, yeah, that's that's good excellent. Um
(23:17):
tofu is close to the Chinese word for luck, so
it's a big part of Chinese lunar New Year celebrations. Um. Also,
in certain parts of Chinese culture, it's considered bad luck
to eat meat on the lunar New Year. So so
I um substitutes would therefore be popular. I'm sure. Yeah.
I also saw something about like a death ritual in
China where um you bring tofu to graves because it's
(23:41):
soft enough for the dead to chew. I could only
find on one place, so I was like, I don't
know if this really I don't know if anyone else knows.
Right In um Mapo, tofu translated means freckled woman. It's
supposedly named after the freckled woman who invented the dish
and served it at a good rice to loyal customers.
(24:02):
I can say that when I was in China, I
definitely there are so many tofu options, Like there was
a dim sum place of tofu. What Yeah, it was
both dim sum and only tofu options. That's amazing. Yeah,
and I remember the dessert being at the time it
was relatively new to tofu because, as I said, it
was not the thing in my house growing up when
(24:24):
they were like the dessert is also tofu. No, I
had some reservations, but it was delicious. So that's a
tofu history of breached. Yes, we're wind. So now let's
take a look at some science. Yeah, but first let's
take a quick look at a word from your sponsor
(24:51):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So the science segment
of this podcast episode is going to deal largely with
the with the health of tofu, the healthfulness of tofu.
But first, a really huge disclaimer. It's a huge one.
It's gigantic, folks, um, So humans scientists included, really like
(25:12):
talking about soy food products. But whenever you see a
headline about the the healthfulness or the lack thereof of
soy please do remember that soy food products is a
ludicrously large bucket of stuff, like like an ocean sized bucket. Really, um,
because in addition to to tofu and its variants, you've
got straight up soybeans as in like ed mam a um.
(25:34):
You've got soy milks, soy soy protein that is created
for the sake of protein. Uh, soy protein that is
manufactured um for for food texture, and kind of crept
into all kinds of products that you don't even realize
it's there, and on and on and on and each
of these foods involve working with soybeans in different ways
that change the nature of their constituent molecules that the
(25:55):
soy protein isolates frequently used in mouse studies to determine
and soy's health effects are going to interact with the
body completely differently from if you just eat some fried tofu.
Speaking of fried tofu, and it's gonna sound real dull
when I just say it out loud, um, but any
fats that you add during the cooking process of a
soy product like tofu are also going to interact with
(26:17):
your body. Yeah, it's the same thing as you know,
sugars and salts and whatever. The nutritive properties of any
single human food product are really hard to suess out
because it's neon impossible to control human diet enough to
create a really good clean study. And on top of that,
human bodies all digest and process food just a little
(26:37):
bit differently. We are. We are all unique snowflakes in
a lovely strange way. Um, but okay, let's talk about
tofu and nutrition. Let's do it. As Annie said at
the top of the show, tofu is a relatively high
in protein. It's kind of mid range in fats and
low in carbohydrates. That means that it's filling and also
(26:57):
that it won't spike or crash your blood sugar. Good times.
They're the facts that are in tofu are pretty good
for you. They're mostly mono unsaturated fatty acids a k a.
The stuff that's been shown to lower bad L d
L cholesterol levels in your body, and tofu itself contains
no cholesterol. It's a fairly high quality protein, especially for
not being an animal product, which means that it contains
(27:18):
relatively high amounts of all of the essential amino acids,
which are the ones that our bodies cannot produce and
thus that we have to get from foods. It is
always best, especially when designing a vegetarian diet, to eat
a variety of different foods that you can intake all
the stuff that your body needs over the course of
a day. M hmm, everything the body needs. Yes, And
(27:39):
unfortunately we don't have that that slurry of matrix stuff
so institutionately or unfortunately. I think there's a debate to
be had either way. I guess you could just drink
a whole lot of soilent um. I don't actually recommend
that either, Sorry, soilent you're not. It's not terrible, it's
it's quite fine. Um, Yes, eats, some eats, eat some
(28:01):
different vegetables, is what I'm saying. Yes, tofu still the
good soys and nutrients that an he was saying, and
uh speak speaking of the nutreats and tofu. It's best
to buy it in opaque or semi opaque containers because,
as with dairy products, exposure to light will degrade some
of tofu Tofu's nutrients um, such as omega three fatty acids. Though, uh,
(28:21):
you know, I don't know if your local Asian market
makes it in house and packages it in clear pint
containers like mine does. Yeah, maybe tries some of that sometime. Anyway,
it's probably delicious. Probably you're not losing a whole lot.
But Lauren, you might be saying, does SOI cause cancer?
I was saying that were you. You were very quiet
about it, but well, you know, thank you for playing along. Um,
(28:44):
eating eating tofu will most likely not cause cancer, and
it may actually help prevent certain kinds of it. Okay,
so this is gonna be one of my weird medical tangents, Yell.
One of the things that soy products in general contain
is particles called isoflavans, which are chemically similar to estrogens.
They're similar enough that isoflavans can fit into some cellular
(29:06):
receptors that were designed for estrogen in your body like
a skeleton key into a lock, Okay, thus acting like
estrogens in certain circumstances. For example, breast tissue cells contain
estrogen receptors, and sometimes when a little chunk of estrogen
locks into one of those receptors, it causes a chain
reaction that encourages cancerous tumor growth. This is the trigger
(29:30):
of about seventy of breast cancers. Um Though, the full
process is really super complex and researchers are still studying
how and why it happens, but that's the basis of it.
That's the first first little stick in the in the
full long chain, long chain of how it does. However,
isoflavians can block it from happening, because if isoflavans get
(29:52):
to those receptors first, the estrogen has nowhere to go.
It can't lock in and set off that tumorous reaction.
Isoflavans can also spurs else to produce a protein that
binds to free roaming estrogen in your body. Meeting that
estrogen will have a hard time locking into any kind
of receptors at all, and isoflavans can even prevent estrogen
from forming in fat tissue in the first place, which
(30:13):
is one of those cancer causing kind of things. Research
into a variety of soy products, not just TOFU has
shown either no correlation with cancer or correlation with lower
rates of cancer in humans and mouse studies. However, two
types of soy protein isolates have been linked to cancer.
(30:34):
These are man made extracts of soy proteins and and
this type of stuff does not wind up in our food,
but they are similar to the stuff that you can
get in like soy supplement pills um so maybe you
don't take those until more research is done, but tofu
is fine on the cancer front. Also, these iso flavians
(30:55):
have not been shown to affect hormone balances or hormone
activity in dudes. So go forath and eat tofu without
being worried about cancer or low sperm counts. Yeah, it's
you know, it's it's what I love about food. Yeah,
sometimes you worry about low sperm counts sometimes when you're
(31:17):
discussing it. Food is so vital to so many things
you just don't even you don't even think about another
thing that you might be thinking about. Should I be
worried about GMOs? Should I know? Okay, well, okay, not
in terms of nutrition. There is and this is a
strong statement, my friends, but I'm but I'm prepared to
(31:38):
make it zero evidence that genetically modified food, as a
large and incredibly multitudinous category, acts any differently in your
body at all than conventional food. Mm hm. Take a
moment and let that sink in. Yeah, okay, that the
one squidge area that I've read about is potential allergen concern.
(32:00):
There there was a case in of um tree nut
allergic patients having reactions to GMO soy because the genetic
bits that had been put into the soy had been
taken from brazil nuts. Okay, but since then researchers and
producers have forgotten a lot more careful about allergies in
that way. And even that one squidgy little bit of
(32:21):
concern is evidence that GMO foods act in your body
exactly the way that regular foods do. That bit was
an allergen and it caused an allergic reaction, not mysterious.
Please do not be scared of eating GMO products merely
because they're genetically modified. Seriously, we will we will do
a whole episode about this sometime. But that's that's the takeaway.
(32:42):
There is an environmental aside here, though, oh is there
m Because some genetic modifications are designed to make crops
less bothered by by herbicides, which basically lets growers spray
herbicides with wild abandon, which is generally bad for the
humans and other living things in the area. If you're
concerned about those practices, do you know, go out there
(33:06):
and inform yourself, you know, do research about the specific
growers of various GMO products and uh and make your
make your consumer choices accordingly. But I'll say it again,
please don't be scared of eating GMO foods just because
they're genetically modified. Right, Even though people weren't poking the
inside of cells with the inside of other cells for
(33:28):
the past few millennia. That's that's the new thing. Um,
we have been genetically modifying our food bye more traditional
methods since we've been farming. Yeah, I mean, just be informed.
We're always a proponent of being informed, which makes sense,
you know what we're doing. Um. I have a friend
who's like tangentially in this field, and she has very
(33:52):
strong opinions on this. You would imagine, I'm sure. Yeah,
oh man, maybe maybe we could get her to to
come talk to us or something. She'd talk talk all right.
She sounds usually when people say this it's sarcastically. But
I bet she's really fun at parties. Yeah, anyone who
(34:17):
will talk GMOs of me at a like cocktail party.
It's automatically we should be friends. Oh but going back
to the environmental thing, hey, is tofu environmentally unfriendly? Man,
you're giving me all these frightening questions. Um, the answer
is like, m okay. One of the arguments for vegetarian
(34:39):
or largely vegetarian eating is the the impact of raising
meat animals, right, because because you know, the calories that
you get from a steak. A lot more um water
and thyme and food product has gone into growing that
steak than would go into growing any ear of corn
or a to or whatever it is that you're growing.
(35:02):
Soy being not a tofu, you don't just grow tofu
like that image. So, yeah, the meats carbon footprint is
really significant. Precisely how significant depends on a whole bunch
of different factors in whether or not you're including them
all at once. That's also a topic for a whole
episode unto itself. So you know that that's an argument
for like, maybe replace some of some meat and some
(35:24):
meals with some tofu. Mondays less mondays exactly that kind
of concept. However, in some countries, like say the United Kingdom,
where most of your soy is being imported, the transport
and manufacture of soy and tofu is also not really
great carbon footprint wise. Sorry, Okay, all your faiths are problematic. Okay,
(35:49):
well be informed. We have to live by our own
our own motto. Yeah, yeah, does Does that Does that
clear everything up? Does that make everything just just perfectly muddy?
The world is very complex. I think that's the takeaway
that we can that we can garner here. I believe
that is all we have for you today. On tofu.
(36:10):
I hope that uh vegetarians, that this kind of makes
up for say, did you just just a little bit um?
And of course there are lots of other soy products.
We touched on a few of them here and there,
but I would love to do whole episodes about Tempa
or um, all of their not though. Man, yeah, we
probably will excellent, yes, but now it's time for a
(36:34):
listener man. Yes. So Lindsay wrote in in response to
our Gin and Tonic episode, and she said, I just
listened to the Gin and Tonic podcast. You spoke about
the British government enacting laws to protect people from gin
by making it more expensive, which in turn led to
illegal and improperly distilled gin resulting in death reminiscent of
(36:55):
our own war on drugs. This reminds me of Costa
Rica their Cassa Guarro. Costa Rica took a different approach
when they were having a rise in deaths from improperly
distilled moonshine liquor that was disproportionately affecting its poorest citizens.
Their approach was to nationalize the production of garrow, a
sugarcane derived liquor and keep it very inexpensive to undercut
(37:19):
illegal operations. Obviously, you have to be a little bit
skeptical when the state takes control of an industry. But
this approach didn't incarcerate a vulnerable community like the War
on drugs and stymied a public health crisis. Yeah. I've
never heard of that, and I thought it was really interesting. Um,
and I went to the website and it looks just
like any old it's like any stuff, any old liquor website.
(37:41):
That's that's fascinating though. That's a I mean, good good
on them. I feel like most stories that you hear
about that kind of thing don't don't don't end happily. Yeah, yeah, yes,
thank you Lindsay for writing in. Definitely very interesting to
hear about that. Emily wrote in about our pineapple episode.
She had a lot of facts, but a lot of
(38:02):
pineapple related facts, but this is one of them. My
final pineapple thought came to me when you were talking
about how expensive they were. I thought of the musical Cabaret,
in the stage version of Cabaret, not the movie. The
Adorable Grocer Hair Schultz gives his crush a pineapple. In
the song it Couldn't Please Me More? And the song
she sings things like, oh, this gift is too extravagant,
(38:25):
and he keeps telling her that she's worth it. It
culminates with him saying if I could, I would fill
your entire room with pineapples. It's an adorable love song
about how expensive pineapples were in nineteen thirties Germany. That
song is probably one of my favorites from the show.
It really subments the love they have from one another. Anyway,
enough of me rambling on about pineapples never enough. But
(38:48):
I I think I've seen cabaret before, and I think
I just wrote that off as like some kind of
weird reference. I wasn't getting Yeah, sure, I was just like, oh,
you know, well whatever, Yeah, I'm sure pine apples were
hard to get and like Nazi Germany. But but but right.
But knowing the history of pineapples, it makes it so
much more poignant. I know, I appreciate it so much
(39:11):
more now. So thank you for that, Emily. I had
totally forgotten about that. And thank you to everyone else
who has written us in or sent does things. Um,
you guys just have so many cool stories, please keep
them coming. Yes, yes, M. We have an email address
food stuff at how stuff works dot com. We're also
(39:32):
on various social media platforms. You can find us on Facebook, Facebook,
and Twitter at food stuff hs W and also on
Instagram at food stuff. And we also have a lot
of very fun videos. I think they're fun anyway you
can find. You can find some of them on Facebook,
(39:54):
you can find them on Amazon Prime for free in
the US with commercials and if you're a Prime member,
no commercials, or you can find them on our very
own website, how stuff works dot com. HM. So yeah,
check check those out, you know, give give a give
a mental high five to our sound engineer, Tristan McNeil,
(40:15):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Food Stuff. I'm Annie Reeve and
I'm Lauren vocal Bomb, and today for all of our
vegetarian friends and frenemies, and also for every single one
of you who wrote in with a listening request. We're
talking about tofu. Yes, well, and tofu is a little
bit more specific. Like people were like, hey, you guys
just talked about an organ meat for like an hour. Uh,
(00:31):
could could you talk about something vegetarian? And we were like, yeah,
that's totally were absolutely, well, do that. We'd love to
I'd like a vegetable. Yeah, I love vegetables. You like tofu?
I love tofu two, especially when it's a deep fried,
at which point it's you know, not necessarily a health
food anymore. But I've always liked the taste and texture
(00:52):
of tofu. My mom actually started me out eating it
when I was maybe like five or six. Um, she
was kind of a crazy hippie out Wow. My family
was the opposite. We were not allowed to have tofu
in my house. What oh my goodness. Hated it so much.
But I had this like really amazing tofu when I
was in China drinks sense, And I've been trying to
(01:13):
recreate it ever since, I think it actually might have been, um,
the dried skin like tofu skin. Okay, what was the
dish like? It was like it was served in a
spiral um and it was thin noodles. What it looked
like thin noodles And I don't know if anybody remembers
his bobbi um packages, Yeah, it looks like that. But
it was tofu and it was like textured on the
(01:34):
outside and it was so good. Oh man, it was
so good. And I've tried and tried and I got
kind of close recently. Um, I'm still looking. If any
listener heroes are out there and know what I'm talking about,
that would be yeah. Yeah, if you have a recipe,
send it on it. So tofu what is it? Um
tofu or dofu and Chinese pinion is coagulated soy milk
(02:00):
that's pressed into blocks. And we will do a whole
other episodes on soy and or soy milk, probably because
they are kind of big topics. Yeah, pretty huge. Um.
Sometimes almonds or black beans are used in place of soybeans.
I can't say I've personally seen this, but but but yeah,
Traditionally it's a it's soybeans. Yes, the literal translation of
(02:23):
tofu is being curd, but it's a Japanese word. Yes. Um.
It also goes by the equally appetizing bean cheese or
bean curd cheese, which is actually a super good scientific
description for it um but does not sound tasty. No,
it doesn't bean cheese. It can come in two main types, fresh,
(02:47):
which can be like soft or silken, extra soft firm
our extra firm, which sounds like mattresses now that I'm
saying it aloud mattress descriptors. Yes, or it can um
uh processed, which includes pickled, fermented, which you might know
is stinky, tofu um dried, frozen or fried. And then
(03:09):
there's also like byproducts such as tofu skin swipehulp, tofu burgers,
to pot ducts, to noodles, to cheese, tofu cream cheese,
tofu ice cream. You've seen the aisles, I'm sure, yes,
aisles might be a lot, but but but well, items
on multiple aisles. Yes, they're pervasive there throughout the store
(03:30):
and retail of tofu in the United States made two
hundred and seventy four million dollars as there are some
two hundred and forty five thousand manufacturers competing in the
tofu industry, the largest ones in Japan, producing about fifty
tons per day. Wow, that is a lot of tofu.
I can't conceive of that much tofu. I'm like looking
(03:52):
at the size of this room and going way more
than this room. And that's about all all my imagination
has for you today. It's a popular red during cuisine,
as you probably knew, um, in part because it's pretty
low key flavor wise, so you can customize it. It
can be savory or sweet or anything in between. That
also can be used in smoothies. Um. It's pretty low calorie,
(04:13):
low fat, but high and iron and protein. Depending on
the thing you use for coagulating, like calcium or magnesium sulfate,
it can also be high in either of those things,
calcium or magnesium. Sure. Um. But speaking of coagulants, let's
talk a little bit about those things and how tofu
is made. Yes, let's start about that. So all you
(04:36):
really need in order to make tofu is soybeans and
water that have been made into soy milk, plus a coagulant,
and traditionally speaking, that coagulant is negari, which is an
extract of salty sea water. You evaporate that brine to
let the sodium chloride the table salt crystallize, then take
that out, leaving you with what's essentially a liquid solution
of magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, and maybe a few weather
(04:58):
mineral salts. You can also evaporate this to get a
powdered form if you so desire, and some people do.
These and other agents that are used as coagulants, like
um like like acids or enzymes, work on the soy
milk in the same way that various coagulants work on
regular milk in order to make it clump up into
yogurt or cheese or et cetera. You can see our
(05:19):
yogurt episode for a full description of this, but essentially
here's what's going on. So soy milk is an emulsion
of proteins and fats in water. An emulsion means that
these molecules are negatively charged, which means they're kind of
keeping each other at arms length. You know, they're they're
giving each other space. And the coagulant works by acidifying
the soy milk just enough to change the molecular charge
(05:40):
of the protein and fat molecules within Suddenly they're all
like like come in for a hug, body doing um,
and they clump up, thus creating solid curds of protein
and fat and liquid whey which is water and some
water soluble proteins. In these our modern times, most large
scale manufacturers skip the seaber line and just use straight
(06:01):
magnesium chloride or calcium sulfate a k a. Gypsum because
they might be making like three point five to fifty
tons of to for per day, at which point you
know you're you're looking to streamline um and nagari, being
a natural product, varies in its chemical composition, so the
second half of this equation is the soy milk. Uh.
(06:23):
To get soy milk, a factory will usually purchase dried
soybeans because they're cheaper to work with than fresh due
to the shipping weight and refrigeration costs and possibility of
spoilage that you get with fresh soybeans, and the the
basic process of making this into soy milk goes as such. Um.
You rehydrate to your dried soybeans by soaking them for
a few hours, then mash slash put um along with
(06:45):
some water to form a slurry that is the industry
term slurry. M m m m m. You heat that's
slurry to relax some of the soy proteins within it,
then separate out the solid bean pulp from the liquid
soy milk. Okay, And there are so so many ways
(07:05):
in which to accomplish this, and a huge amount of
industrial research goes into the best and or cheapest ways.
How the soy beans are treated in making soy milk
for tofu will hugely impact the flavor, like beanie or
funky versus kind of neutral that the color yellowed versus
a kind of pure white um, and the texture kind
of grainy versus smooth and silken. So do you haul
(07:27):
the beans before grinding? Do you use traditional Japanese stone
grinders or something a little bit more modern, although probably
also Japanese. Do you separate the solids from the liquids
prior to heating or afterwards? Do you concentrate the soy
milk after it's separated and before it's coagulated? If you
ever want a rabbit hole of food production techniques, Tofu
is so happy to provide so many questions, so much
(07:51):
research to do. Oh yes, but Once you've got your
soy milk, however you so choose to do it, you
let your coagulant make some soy curt at that point.
If you're going for very softer silk and tofu, you're
you're pretty much done. If you're going for firmer tofu,
you press the kurds to remove as much way as
you so choose. And um, tofu was packaged along with
(08:12):
some of that way to keep it moist and fresh. Ah,
So that's why I always with it like a liquid. Yeah, okay,
you can pour that off and I don't know, like
drink it or use it in cooking or whatever you want. Yeah,
add some protein. I have to say. I thought there'd
be more ingredients in tofu, and I don't know why
I thought that, but um, apparently it's you can make
(08:35):
it yourself. And it's my personal wouldn't say easy, but
definitely within the realm of doing sure, like like like
labor intensive perhaps, Yeah, And I just don't have things
like you need a cheese cloth and some kitchen weights,
and I don't have these things. But we can get
you some cheese cloth. Any we can get you some
cheese cloth by by four o'clock. Okay, okay, okay, that's exciting, okay, okay. Anyway,
(09:03):
I was going to go into like how to make it,
but it's pretty much the same as what Lauren just discussed,
but on a much smaller kitchen scale, and you can
look up the recipes. There's so many recipes online. You
basically you make your own soy milk and then yeah,
you put in a coagulant and just wait for it
to to form up with some lights and you know,
(09:26):
just just yeah, press it, you know. I mean again,
it depends on what you want to do. And you
can make silky tofu, you can make firm tofu. It's
a little bit more intensive than than yogurt, and then
it's slightly more than stirring because there are beans involved.
But but it's really the same principle pretty much, which
I had literally no idea about before we did the
research for this episode. I know, it's just one of
those things that never occurred to me to try to
(09:47):
make my own tofu. But it sounds um like it
can be finicky, but the rewards are great, yes, if
you succeed. So for all those kitchen adventurers out there,
why don't give it a try. Yeah, if you make
your own, let us know, let us know how it's
different from store brand tofoo. Yeah. Absolutely, So that's kind
(10:07):
of the what is it portion? Um, Let's talk about
some history, but first a break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So Tofu,
(10:31):
despite being known by its Japanese name, most likely originated
in China sometime around two six to two twenty BC.
That's the Han dynasty. If you're more familiar with the
dynastic version of timekeeping in China, Yes, and this is
the production of it. Probably originated there. Then it was
(10:52):
probably discovered much earlier by accident, as a lot of
these fermentty type things are yes a pot. Other story
goes that around this time, a chef living in northern
China was testing out ways to spice up the popular
dish of soy bean soup by adding some unrefined sea
salt that had some naturally occurring coagulating nagari. But to
(11:18):
his surprise, is not to ours, uh, it curdled into
this gel tofu like thing that people loved. It was
delicious and sort of a fun. Spin off of this
story goes that a man was trying to fix something
for his parents who had lost their teeth and they
could only eat soft food. So he purated some cooked
soy beans, but the parents to spit take after trying it,
(11:41):
saying that there were too many solid bits of bean
in there. So the sun tried again and he passed
the soup through some mesh. But that still didn't says
by the parents, who thought it had no flavor. No,
so he's on his last leg, and he reheated the
mixture and added some salt, and then he let it
cool and it for armed the tofu like jelly that
(12:02):
was probably tofu ish. And finally his parents were not
only satisfied, but very satisfied. And there you go. Another
legend that tells the tale of Lord Luan, a prince
of the Haunt dynasty, and according to this, he invented
tofu in and around one BC. Okay, yeah, this fellow
(12:26):
was on the hunt for an immortality elix sir, so
he ventured alone off into the mountains to create this potion.
Um but alas he wasn't successful. Let me know of Hey,
whole tangent could happen right now, but it won't. His
experiments deadly behind a soft white substance, which he got
(12:48):
the pheasants to try, of course, because you could been poison. Yeah,
he didn't want to die, but they declared it delicious
and non poisonous. Um. And this newly discovered non immortality
alixir was named tofu or probably yes, but yes exactly. However,
this story didn't pop up until about a thousand years
(13:12):
after it was supposed to have happened, so historians think
it's probably not true. Uh. And this is sort of
a thing that sometimes in history, a popular invention story
goes to a popular historical figure. Apparently it's all I mean,
I like the immortality. Oh sure yeah. Another theory claims
(13:34):
that the Chinese picked up milk curdling techniques from the
Mongolians or the East Indians um. And the crux of
this argument is pretty much words. The Chinese word do
fu is very close to the Mongolian word rufu, which
translates to spoil to rotten milk. Yes, there's actually not
that much evidence for any of those stories, not surprisingly really,
(13:59):
but those are like three popular origin stories of tofu,
since it was relatively simple and cheap to produce. However,
it originated, it became a favorite delicacy throughout China. There
are descriptions found in writings and poetry from the Song
and Yuan dynasty, which is nine sixty to twelve seventy
(14:21):
nine CE and twelve seventy one, respectively, and they indicate
that tofu production was by the most part standardized by
these times. Sudong Pole, a poet during the Song dynasty,
purportedly was inspired by his love of tofu to invent
the athlete named dish dung Po to fu sure. Sure.
(14:49):
It was also used in traditional medicine to do things
like clean your spleen and replenish your cheat. Huh spleen cleaning.
I could use a good spleen cleaning, I'm sure, very spleeny.
Ninth century Buddhist monks who were big fans of tofu
because they thought the vegetarian diet was better for the spirit,
(15:09):
introduced the soya plant to Japan and Korea, although they
could have been in either of those places or both
of those places for much longer. Probably wherever you were
making soy milk happen, yeah, or or making ground soy
soup products. Thought, for at first, I thought you were
(15:30):
saying like from the ground ground soy supposed to air
soyr fires. So I was like, oh, with our powers combined.
Tofu was first mentioned in UH nine document by tau
Ku Tofu the word that is. At the time, people
in China gave tofu the nickname vice Mayor's mutton because
(15:55):
of this story of this guy that was too poor
to afford mutton so he bought to instead. But I'm
pretty sure the point of that story was actually frugality
was a virtuous thing. He was doing it a good thing,
not not not like a not like Welsh rabbit, which
is just making fun of a number of levels of right, Okay,
I think it was positive, Like, yeah, he's making do
(16:17):
I think so. The first written record of a tofu
dish served in Japan describes an offering served in eleven
eight three c e. At the Kasuga Shrine and the
upper class of Japan. They adopted tofu fairly quickly, and
it was widely enjoyed by the fourteen hundreds. A Japanese
(16:38):
book published during the Edo period, which was sixteen or
three to eighteen sixty seven, had over one hundred foo
recipes in it. Yeah, and part of that was probably
related to the rise in acceptance of Buddhism. If we
go back over to China, during the Qing dynasty um
which was six to nineteen eleven, Emperor KHANSI reportedly gave
(16:59):
his officials locally and strongly flavored tofu in place of jade,
our gold, or the like while on an inspection tour
of southern China. I can't imagine expecting jade and getting
I can't say it would be upset necessarily defense on
now get the tofu was, and how hungry I was
at that current, Yes, but I just love that I
(17:23):
know I'll get them tofu be perfect. At the time,
tofu is mostly made in small shops using um similar
methods in both China and Japan all the way up
until the nineteen sixties. Yes, and then the Japanese Food
Research Institute made a set of recommendations aimed at standardizing
(17:45):
and modernizing tofu, including things like using calcium soul fate
as the thickener instead of nagari and using pressure cookers,
hydraulic presses centrifuges instead of doing everything annually. And as
you guess, the recommendations succeeded in speeding up tofu production.
(18:06):
But what effect did it have on the tofu exactly?
Some tofu producers refused to adopt it, thinking it negatively
impacted the flavor, and they still do everything by hand.
It's beautiful. I know. I want to do a taste test.
I do too. I want to know if you can
taste like any difference. I imagine you imagine you probably can. Yeah.
I would hope so, and I would guess. So. Maybe
(18:28):
one day, Lauren, we'll get we'll get a taste test,
we'll know the truth. We'll have to go to Japan. Well,
we'll just want to tell we'll have to tell your
boss that it's necessary. Absolutely, he won't be a largue.
I'm sure. The believed first written English use of the
word tofu, and it was spelled with a W at
this point. O w F you by an American, was
(18:50):
in a letter exchange between Englishman James Flint and Benjamin Franklin. Yeah,
bringing up in the tofy episode. Franklin had apparently been
on the hunt for what he called Chinese cheese since
reading about it in the writings of Domingo Fernandez Navarette.
(19:11):
His work. By the way, um Domingos work was first
published in sixteen sixty five, and it was translated into
English and seventeen o four, which is the first known
instance of tofu in an English language documentary. Written down
but but not okay right. Earlier in the sixteen hundreds,
Captain John Sarah's wrote of his time in Japan and
(19:32):
is thought to have been describing tofu with of cheese
they have plenty, butter they have none, Nor will they
eat any milk because they hold it to be as blood,
nor will they tame beast. So the cheese was probably
probably tofu because without taming beasts, I'd imagine that it
would be difficult to get Yeah, milk cheese. Yeah, And
(19:54):
I thought I wanted to include that just because I
thought it was interesting that the kind of sounds like
vegetarian is um our veganism, Yeah, because they won't have
any milk butter. Yeah. Yeah, interesting historical and also also
I just love that there was just no concept of
of a cradled product other than cheese. It's like, that's
(20:17):
that's what it is. This is a cheese thing. It
must be cheese. Yeah. Um. In the US, despite having
soybeans since the seventeen hundreds, um, and they were made
popular by Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush of the
eighteen hundred's. The first tofu company, by the way, opened
in eighteen seventy eight in San Francisco. Tofu wasn't really
(20:42):
that popular for a long time. There was a modest
bump after soldiers returned from World War Two, some of
them with Asian cuisine and some with Asian spouses. Um.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, soybeans were predominantly
grown as a cash crop to regenerate soil in between
crops um between useful crops exactly heavy scare quotes there,
(21:07):
they were very heavy um also as food for livestock
and to produce oil used in manufacturing are for culinary use,
especially as World War Two started blocking the trade of
other imported oils and fats. Yeah. By the nineteen fifties,
American soybean production nearly equal to Asian soybean production, and
(21:28):
by the nineteen sixties the US provided of the world supply. However,
it wasn't until the nineteen seventies that more mainstream stores
started offering tofu in response to the growing popularity of
global cuisines and also high meat costs plus their eyes
of vegetarianism and just general health awareness, tofu started to
(21:49):
gain popularity, and today the US is one of the
world's largest soybean producers. I think it's like openness, but
still the US consumes relatively low amounts of tofu compared
places like China, where tofu is a big part of
their culture. Oh yeah, there's all these beautiful legends about it.
(22:11):
I mean, other than that those origin stories, right, Yeah.
A popular one is about a poor but pretty lady
who is known as being curd beauty what tofu she Sha,
which comes from a story about a woman named she
Sha who was so beautiful fish froze and sank to
their deaths the site of her, and thus her name
(22:33):
came to mean beauty. So yeah, being curd beauty. Wow,
that's some like like collateral kind of kind of stuff.
That's intense, intense beauty. I can just imagine walking by
the river and the fish died. Sorry, I didn't mean it,
I can't go anywhere. Um. A man who sexually harasses
(22:56):
a woman is said to be eating her tofu. Yeah,
it sounds pretty dirty. Has something to do with a
beautiful tofu shopkeeper who men would keep coming to visit
the shop, less for the tofu and more for the woman.
Oh okay, I get it. Okay, that's not as dirty
as it sounds. No, yeah, that's that's good excellent. Um
(23:17):
tofu is close to the Chinese word for luck, so
it's a big part of Chinese lunar New Year celebrations. Um. Also,
in certain parts of Chinese culture, it's considered bad luck
to eat meat on the lunar New Year. So so
I um substitutes would therefore be popular. I'm sure. Yeah.
I also saw something about like a death ritual in
China where um you bring tofu to graves because it's
(23:41):
soft enough for the dead to chew. I could only
find on one place, so I was like, I don't
know if this really I don't know if anyone else knows.
Right In um Mapo, tofu translated means freckled woman. It's
supposedly named after the freckled woman who invented the dish
and served it at a good rice to loyal customers.
(24:02):
I can say that when I was in China, I
definitely there are so many tofu options, Like there was
a dim sum place of tofu. What Yeah, it was
both dim sum and only tofu options. That's amazing. Yeah,
and I remember the dessert being at the time it
was relatively new to tofu because, as I said, it
was not the thing in my house growing up when
(24:24):
they were like the dessert is also tofu. No, I
had some reservations, but it was delicious. So that's a
tofu history of breached. Yes, we're wind. So now let's
take a look at some science. Yeah, but first let's
take a quick look at a word from your sponsor
(24:51):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So the science segment
of this podcast episode is going to deal largely with
the with the health of tofu, the healthfulness of tofu.
But first, a really huge disclaimer. It's a huge one.
It's gigantic, folks, um, So humans scientists included, really like
(25:12):
talking about soy food products. But whenever you see a
headline about the the healthfulness or the lack thereof of
soy please do remember that soy food products is a
ludicrously large bucket of stuff, like like an ocean sized bucket. Really, um,
because in addition to to tofu and its variants, you've
got straight up soybeans as in like ed mam a um.
(25:34):
You've got soy milks, soy soy protein that is created
for the sake of protein. Uh, soy protein that is
manufactured um for for food texture, and kind of crept
into all kinds of products that you don't even realize
it's there, and on and on and on and each
of these foods involve working with soybeans in different ways
that change the nature of their constituent molecules that the
(25:55):
soy protein isolates frequently used in mouse studies to determine
and soy's health effects are going to interact with the
body completely differently from if you just eat some fried tofu.
Speaking of fried tofu, and it's gonna sound real dull
when I just say it out loud, um, but any
fats that you add during the cooking process of a
soy product like tofu are also going to interact with
(26:17):
your body. Yeah, it's the same thing as you know,
sugars and salts and whatever. The nutritive properties of any
single human food product are really hard to suess out
because it's neon impossible to control human diet enough to
create a really good clean study. And on top of that,
human bodies all digest and process food just a little
(26:37):
bit differently. We are. We are all unique snowflakes in
a lovely strange way. Um, but okay, let's talk about
tofu and nutrition. Let's do it. As Annie said at
the top of the show, tofu is a relatively high
in protein. It's kind of mid range in fats and
low in carbohydrates. That means that it's filling and also
(26:57):
that it won't spike or crash your blood sugar. Good times.
They're the facts that are in tofu are pretty good
for you. They're mostly mono unsaturated fatty acids a k a.
The stuff that's been shown to lower bad L d
L cholesterol levels in your body, and tofu itself contains
no cholesterol. It's a fairly high quality protein, especially for
not being an animal product, which means that it contains
(27:18):
relatively high amounts of all of the essential amino acids,
which are the ones that our bodies cannot produce and
thus that we have to get from foods. It is
always best, especially when designing a vegetarian diet, to eat
a variety of different foods that you can intake all
the stuff that your body needs over the course of
a day. M hmm, everything the body needs. Yes, And
(27:39):
unfortunately we don't have that that slurry of matrix stuff
so institutionately or unfortunately. I think there's a debate to
be had either way. I guess you could just drink
a whole lot of soilent um. I don't actually recommend
that either, Sorry, soilent you're not. It's not terrible, it's
it's quite fine. Um, Yes, eats, some eats, eat some
(28:01):
different vegetables, is what I'm saying. Yes, tofu still the
good soys and nutrients that an he was saying, and
uh speak speaking of the nutreats and tofu. It's best
to buy it in opaque or semi opaque containers because,
as with dairy products, exposure to light will degrade some
of tofu Tofu's nutrients um, such as omega three fatty acids. Though, uh,
(28:21):
you know, I don't know if your local Asian market
makes it in house and packages it in clear pint
containers like mine does. Yeah, maybe tries some of that sometime. Anyway,
it's probably delicious. Probably you're not losing a whole lot.
But Lauren, you might be saying, does SOI cause cancer?
I was saying that were you. You were very quiet
about it, but well, you know, thank you for playing along. Um,
(28:44):
eating eating tofu will most likely not cause cancer, and
it may actually help prevent certain kinds of it. Okay,
so this is gonna be one of my weird medical tangents, Yell.
One of the things that soy products in general contain
is particles called isoflavans, which are chemically similar to estrogens.
They're similar enough that isoflavans can fit into some cellular
(29:06):
receptors that were designed for estrogen in your body like
a skeleton key into a lock, Okay, thus acting like
estrogens in certain circumstances. For example, breast tissue cells contain
estrogen receptors, and sometimes when a little chunk of estrogen
locks into one of those receptors, it causes a chain
reaction that encourages cancerous tumor growth. This is the trigger
(29:30):
of about seventy of breast cancers. Um Though, the full
process is really super complex and researchers are still studying
how and why it happens, but that's the basis of it.
That's the first first little stick in the in the
full long chain, long chain of how it does. However,
isoflavians can block it from happening, because if isoflavans get
(29:52):
to those receptors first, the estrogen has nowhere to go.
It can't lock in and set off that tumorous reaction.
Isoflavans can also spurs else to produce a protein that
binds to free roaming estrogen in your body. Meeting that
estrogen will have a hard time locking into any kind
of receptors at all, and isoflavans can even prevent estrogen
from forming in fat tissue in the first place, which
(30:13):
is one of those cancer causing kind of things. Research
into a variety of soy products, not just TOFU has
shown either no correlation with cancer or correlation with lower
rates of cancer in humans and mouse studies. However, two
types of soy protein isolates have been linked to cancer.
(30:34):
These are man made extracts of soy proteins and and
this type of stuff does not wind up in our food,
but they are similar to the stuff that you can
get in like soy supplement pills um so maybe you
don't take those until more research is done, but tofu
is fine on the cancer front. Also, these iso flavians
(30:55):
have not been shown to affect hormone balances or hormone
activity in dudes. So go forath and eat tofu without
being worried about cancer or low sperm counts. Yeah, it's
you know, it's it's what I love about food. Yeah,
sometimes you worry about low sperm counts sometimes when you're
(31:17):
discussing it. Food is so vital to so many things
you just don't even you don't even think about another
thing that you might be thinking about. Should I be
worried about GMOs? Should I know? Okay, well, okay, not
in terms of nutrition. There is and this is a
strong statement, my friends, but I'm but I'm prepared to
(31:38):
make it zero evidence that genetically modified food, as a
large and incredibly multitudinous category, acts any differently in your
body at all than conventional food. Mm hm. Take a
moment and let that sink in. Yeah, okay, that the
one squidge area that I've read about is potential allergen concern.
(32:00):
There there was a case in of um tree nut
allergic patients having reactions to GMO soy because the genetic
bits that had been put into the soy had been
taken from brazil nuts. Okay, but since then researchers and
producers have forgotten a lot more careful about allergies in
that way. And even that one squidgy little bit of
(32:21):
concern is evidence that GMO foods act in your body
exactly the way that regular foods do. That bit was
an allergen and it caused an allergic reaction, not mysterious.
Please do not be scared of eating GMO products merely
because they're genetically modified. Seriously, we will we will do
a whole episode about this sometime. But that's that's the takeaway.
(32:42):
There is an environmental aside here, though, oh is there
m Because some genetic modifications are designed to make crops
less bothered by by herbicides, which basically lets growers spray
herbicides with wild abandon, which is generally bad for the
humans and other living things in the area. If you're
concerned about those practices, do you know, go out there
(33:06):
and inform yourself, you know, do research about the specific
growers of various GMO products and uh and make your
make your consumer choices accordingly. But I'll say it again,
please don't be scared of eating GMO foods just because
they're genetically modified. Right, Even though people weren't poking the
inside of cells with the inside of other cells for
(33:28):
the past few millennia. That's that's the new thing. Um,
we have been genetically modifying our food bye more traditional
methods since we've been farming. Yeah, I mean, just be informed.
We're always a proponent of being informed, which makes sense,
you know what we're doing. Um. I have a friend
who's like tangentially in this field, and she has very
(33:52):
strong opinions on this. You would imagine, I'm sure. Yeah,
oh man, maybe maybe we could get her to to
come talk to us or something. She'd talk talk all right.
She sounds usually when people say this it's sarcastically. But
I bet she's really fun at parties. Yeah, anyone who
(34:17):
will talk GMOs of me at a like cocktail party.
It's automatically we should be friends. Oh but going back
to the environmental thing, hey, is tofu environmentally unfriendly? Man,
you're giving me all these frightening questions. Um, the answer
is like, m okay. One of the arguments for vegetarian
(34:39):
or largely vegetarian eating is the the impact of raising
meat animals, right, because because you know, the calories that
you get from a steak. A lot more um water
and thyme and food product has gone into growing that
steak than would go into growing any ear of corn
or a to or whatever it is that you're growing.
(35:02):
Soy being not a tofu, you don't just grow tofu
like that image. So, yeah, the meats carbon footprint is
really significant. Precisely how significant depends on a whole bunch
of different factors in whether or not you're including them
all at once. That's also a topic for a whole
episode unto itself. So you know that that's an argument
for like, maybe replace some of some meat and some
(35:24):
meals with some tofu. Mondays less mondays exactly that kind
of concept. However, in some countries, like say the United Kingdom,
where most of your soy is being imported, the transport
and manufacture of soy and tofu is also not really
great carbon footprint wise. Sorry, Okay, all your faiths are problematic. Okay,
(35:49):
well be informed. We have to live by our own
our own motto. Yeah, yeah, does Does that Does that
clear everything up? Does that make everything just just perfectly muddy?
The world is very complex. I think that's the takeaway
that we can that we can garner here. I believe
that is all we have for you today. On tofu.
(36:10):
I hope that uh vegetarians, that this kind of makes
up for say, did you just just a little bit um?
And of course there are lots of other soy products.
We touched on a few of them here and there,
but I would love to do whole episodes about Tempa
or um, all of their not though. Man, yeah, we
probably will excellent, yes, but now it's time for a
(36:34):
listener man. Yes. So Lindsay wrote in in response to
our Gin and Tonic episode, and she said, I just
listened to the Gin and Tonic podcast. You spoke about
the British government enacting laws to protect people from gin
by making it more expensive, which in turn led to
illegal and improperly distilled gin resulting in death reminiscent of
(36:55):
our own war on drugs. This reminds me of Costa
Rica their Cassa Guarro. Costa Rica took a different approach
when they were having a rise in deaths from improperly
distilled moonshine liquor that was disproportionately affecting its poorest citizens.
Their approach was to nationalize the production of garrow, a
sugarcane derived liquor and keep it very inexpensive to undercut
(37:19):
illegal operations. Obviously, you have to be a little bit
skeptical when the state takes control of an industry. But
this approach didn't incarcerate a vulnerable community like the War
on drugs and stymied a public health crisis. Yeah. I've
never heard of that, and I thought it was really interesting. Um,
and I went to the website and it looks just
like any old it's like any stuff, any old liquor website.
(37:41):
That's that's fascinating though. That's a I mean, good good
on them. I feel like most stories that you hear
about that kind of thing don't don't don't end happily. Yeah, yeah, yes,
thank you Lindsay for writing in. Definitely very interesting to
hear about that. Emily wrote in about our pineapple episode.
She had a lot of facts, but a lot of
(38:02):
pineapple related facts, but this is one of them. My
final pineapple thought came to me when you were talking
about how expensive they were. I thought of the musical Cabaret,
in the stage version of Cabaret, not the movie. The
Adorable Grocer Hair Schultz gives his crush a pineapple. In
the song it Couldn't Please Me More? And the song
she sings things like, oh, this gift is too extravagant,
(38:25):
and he keeps telling her that she's worth it. It
culminates with him saying if I could, I would fill
your entire room with pineapples. It's an adorable love song
about how expensive pineapples were in nineteen thirties Germany. That
song is probably one of my favorites from the show.
It really subments the love they have from one another. Anyway,
enough of me rambling on about pineapples never enough. But
(38:48):
I I think I've seen cabaret before, and I think
I just wrote that off as like some kind of
weird reference. I wasn't getting Yeah, sure, I was just like, oh,
you know, well whatever, Yeah, I'm sure pine apples were
hard to get and like Nazi Germany. But but but right.
But knowing the history of pineapples, it makes it so
much more poignant. I know, I appreciate it so much
(39:11):
more now. So thank you for that, Emily. I had
totally forgotten about that. And thank you to everyone else
who has written us in or sent does things. Um,
you guys just have so many cool stories, please keep
them coming. Yes, yes, M. We have an email address
food stuff at how stuff works dot com. We're also
(39:32):
on various social media platforms. You can find us on Facebook, Facebook,
and Twitter at food stuff hs W and also on
Instagram at food stuff. And we also have a lot
of very fun videos. I think they're fun anyway you
can find. You can find some of them on Facebook,
(39:54):
you can find them on Amazon Prime for free in
the US with commercials and if you're a Prime member,
no commercials, or you can find them on our very
own website, how stuff works dot com. HM. So yeah,
check check those out, you know, give give a give
a mental high five to our sound engineer, Tristan McNeil,
(40:15):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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