How Domestic Soybeans Are Processed and Upgraded into "Golden Beans"
Drink a cup of thick soy milk in the morning, have a bowl of mapo tofu over rice at noon, and enjoy a few pieces of fermented tofu with your porridge in the evening. Our daily life is inseparable from all kinds of traditional soybean products. They are not only an important source of plant protein for people, but also a delicacy on Chinese dining tables.
With the continuous breakthroughs in China's soybean processing technology, in addition to traditional soybean oil, tofu, soy milk and soy drink, the soybean products people can eat are becoming more and more diverse, and their quality and value are constantly rising. Each inconspicuous domestic soybean is transformed through processing into a "golden bean."
China has a long history of soybean processing, with 90% of domestic soybeans used for food processing
Soybeans are highly nutritious and have long been known as the "meat of the field and king of nutrition." China is the homeland of soybeans and the birthplace of processed soybean foods. As early as more than 5,000 years ago, Chinese people began cultivating and eating soybeans. In 500 BC, Chinese people first made soybeans into soy milk, and during the Western Han Dynasty they produced the world's first block of tofu. By the Northern Song Dynasty, soybean oil was successfully extracted from soybeans. After that, processed products such as fermented tofu, soy drink, soybean paste and frozen tofu appeared one after another.
With the development of science and technology, there are currently more than 12,000 products in 8 major categories worldwide that use soybeans as raw or auxiliary materials, including foods, beverages, medicines, feed products, textiles, fine chemical products, building material products and biological products.
"Compared with foreign countries, China's soybeans are mainly used for food processing." Han Tianfu, chief scientist of the National Soybean Industry Technology System and researcher at the Institute of Crop Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told reporters that in a broad sense, soybean processing mainly includes three major parts: soybean oil processing, food processing and feed processing, while in China it is mainly concentrated on the processing of traditional soybean products and protein products.
Why is there such a difference? Yu Hansong, a scientist at the National Soybean Industry Technology System and professor at the College of Food Science and Engineering of Jilin Agricultural University, explained: "Compared with foreign soybeans, domestic soybeans have relatively lower yields and lower oil extraction rates, but their protein content is very high and they are also very nutritious. Therefore, foreign soybeans are mainly used for oil pressing and feed soybean meal, while domestic soybeans are mainly used for food processing." Data shows that from 2012 to 2015, the amount of soybean raw material used in China's food industry ranged from 10 million tons to 11.5 million tons. In recent years, China's domestic soybean output has been around 12 million tons, meaning more than 90% of domestic soybeans are used for food.
The market demand for the soybean processing industry is very large. According to statistics, in 2015 China's annual soybean processing volume reached 92 million tons, of which about 80 million tons were used for oil processing, mostly using imported soybeans as raw material; the other more than 10 million tons were used for food processing, mainly based on domestic soybeans.
Continuous breakthroughs in processing technology raise the value of soybean by-products by a hundredfold
Today in some supermarkets in Northeast China, a "high-dietary-fiber plant meat" produced by Jilin Friend Foods Co., Ltd. using technology developed by the National Soybean Industry Technology System sells for 10-20 yuan per jin and is favored by many consumers. It is made from okara as the raw material.
As a by-product of soybean processing, okara is either discarded or converted into feed. As feed, okara sells for 0.1 yuan per jin on the market, but after being processed into "plant fiber meat," its added value increases by more than 100 times.
Soybean meal, also a by-product of soybean processing, has been transformed into functional salt - soybean peptide salt. A team led by Wang Fengzhong, a researcher at the Institute of Food Science and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, hydrolyzed the protein in soybean meal into active peptides through enzymes, extracted them and added them to ordinary table salt. "Compared with ordinary table salt, soybean peptide salt has the function of lowering blood pressure, and the peptides themselves also act as a flavor enhancer, making it more suitable for relevant populations to consume." Wang Fengzhong told reporters that once put into production, it can increase the value of otherwise discarded soybean meal a hundredfold.
"The comprehensive utilization of okara and soybean meal is an innovation of our industry technology system in the comprehensive utilization of soybean processing by-products." According to Yu Hansong, in recent years China has made a series of breakthroughs in soybean processing equipment and technology research and development. His team has not only developed a series of high-dietary-fiber plant meat products, but also established a high-dietary-fiber processing technology system using by-products and whole soybeans as raw materials, gradually improving and building a systematic project integrating research and development, pilot testing and industrialization of high-dietary-fiber product series. "Taking okara as an example, every 1 ton of soybeans processed produces about 1.5 tons of okara. Based on China's current annual production of about 20 million tons of wet okara, if all of it were utilized and developed into products, it would be equivalent to saving 4 million tons of grain, equal to increasing China's total annual soybean output by about 30%." Yu Hansong said that once these processing by-products are efficiently utilized, the value of soybean processing will be immeasurable.
It is understood that at present, the processing of domestic soybeans in China is mainly divided into two categories. One is the industrialization of traditional products, that is, turning traditional handmade production into factory production, such as the vacuum compression process for frozen tofu and the standardized production of thousand-layer tofu. The other is the functionalization of ordinary foods, that is, the development of functional and health foods, extracting nutritional components from soybeans for further processing.
Wang Yan, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Food Science and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has been working on soybean quality evaluation and food development for several years. "Forget-Worry Soy Milk Powder" is a functional product developed by her and her team members. "Daylily, also called forget-worry grass, has anti-depressant and sleep-promoting effects. Combined with soy milk powder, it gives the soy milk powder health benefits." Wang Yan introduced that in addition to forget-worry soy milk powder, more than 30 high-value-added products with health benefits, such as lunasin-enriched powder and bean sprout powder, have already been developed in the laboratory.
Broad market prospects require tapping the potential of high-quality food use and tiered utilization
With continuous breakthroughs in deep-processing technology, there are more and more leading soybean processing enterprises with output values in the hundreds of millions of yuan. At the same time, some quite capable investors and distributors are optimistic about the market potential of soybean foods and have entered the soybean products industry, making competition in the soybean processing market increasingly fierce and also driving the development of the industry.
Today, as China promotes structural adjustment and transformation of development modes, especially against the backdrop of reducing grain and increasing soybeans, the establishment of a high-quality food-use route for domestic soybeans has brought opportunities to the processing industry. And as people's requirements for healthy diets increase, market demand for soybean products as a source of high-quality protein is expanding.