More than just a bean

Usually when I think of soy, I would only imagine soymilk, or soy sauce, or just the little beans that pop out of the plant. I would brush off the idea of eating soy, and just thought it was one of those things healthy people eat, or that salty sauce people put on their Chinese food. I never even imagined I was eating it every day, in almost everything I choose to eat. Patel makes this realization to me, in chapter 7, when exploring the world of soy. Honestly, Stuffed & Starved, has not been one of my favorite reads, and I could not find any relevance to reading it, and only managed to scrape through reading the past six chapters. However, the relevance of this book became clear to me when reading chapter 7, and the many feats of the soybean.
In relation to Patel’s comparison of ingredients to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, soy is that “small amount of the rarest and most magical vitamin of them all” (165). That small amount may lie underneath all of the other bad ingredients in the food, and may not actually help your diet in anyway. Take for example, soy’s use in chocolate, as Patel describes lecithin. Lecithin is “an emulsifier, and additive that makes fats and water mix...it is better suited to the rigours of mass production; as it’s poured through the different machines in the factory” (166). Although, Patel goes on to say that lecithin is not needed in chocolate production anymore, it still turns off the idea of eating chocolate to me now. Just feels like I am adding more poison to my body that will just drag it down more, instead of just munching on a sweet treat. Patel continues to explain that soy is used in meat, margarines, and oils. Soy has “come to occupy a key place in the world food system not because of its taste or flavour, but because of its utility to everyone except the consumer. At best, this means surrendering control over something ingested every day” (166). Soy may seem like a healthier option, if you are actually going to eat the bean, but when soy is used as an oil, and gets mixed into food high in sugars and fats, it can be harmful, in a sense. So much so, that soy is probably included in all of those hard to pronounce ingredients on your favorite candy bar.
Patel has definitely opened up my eyes on the relevance of what food I eat, and has made me become a little more cautious as to what my diet consists of, and where my health is going. Not to say, that the whole world food system is not an issue and not important, but Patel put this into a new relevance for me, as I could see that this issue of food does not only involve those across the world, but also everyone else—anyone who eats food! Patel has stepped it up in this past chapter, as I now have more of an open mind to the food system, and the relevance I have to it.