Dietary protein quality in infants and children. IV. A corn-soy-milk blend

Beyond the 'raw' and the 'cooked': a history of fortified blended foods

This paper offers a history of fortified blended foods, a humanitarian product that first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Tracing its emergence and development, the paper argues that this food was the product of four key historical trends: (i) the search for a compact and efficient diet in the wake of the Second World War; (ii) the high modernist movement that saw science and technology as a way to improve on traditional foods; (iii) the state-led industrialisation of the development decades oriented around the notion of a worldwide 'protein gap'; and (iv) the legacy of 'productivist' agriculture in the United States, generating massive surpluses in certain crops that had to be adapted creatively for a multitude of uses. The paper positions fortified blended foods in these broader historical processes, and asserts that humanitarian techniques are very much rooted in cultural, political, and social conditions.

The application of protein concentrates from locally available legumes in the development of weaning foods

The effect of mixing different sources of vegetable proteins from legumes in the preparation of infant weaning foods was investigated. Melon, cowpea and soya as sole protein sources or as a mixture were fed to 60 albino rats. A milk powder-based commercial product (Cerelac) was used as control diet. The mixture of the vegetable protein diet compared favorably with the control diet in terms of growth rate, protein efficiency ratio (PER) and net protein ratio (NPR) and also ensured optimum nitrogen content in liver, kidney and muscle tissues. In contrast the use of individual protein sources failed to support satisfactory growth and were inferior to those in animals fed with the control or mixed diets. It was thus concluded that in the developing countries an application of such a mixture of vegetable proteins may be suitable in the preparation of weaning foods.

Soybean protein in human nutrition: an overview

The nutritional value of processed soy protein in human protein nutrition is reviewed on the basis of growth, nitrogen balance and metabolic studies in infants, children, adolescents and adults. When well processed soy products serve as the major or sole source of the protein intake, their protein value approaches or equals that of foods of animal origin, and they are fully capable of meeting the long term essential amino acid and protein needs of children and adults. The significance of the sulfur amino acid content of soy protein for practical human nutrition is also examined. For young children and adults, under conditions of normal usage of soy protein, it is concluded that methionine supplementation of good quality products is unnecessary and possibly undesirable. For feeding of the newborn, the limited data available suggest that supplementation of soy‐based formulas with methionine may be beneficial. However, the appropriate level of supplementation is considerably less than that suggested from results obtained in rat feeding studies. At total protein intakes that approximate current dietary protein allowances, well processed soy protein products can replace meat and fish proteins without reducing the utilization of dietary nitrogen in adults, and they can serve as nutritionally valuable protein sources in cereal‐based diets for child feeding. The value of long term studies concerned with tolerance to and acceptability of new soy protein products in adults is emphasized, and favorable results with two isolated soy protein products are described. The data indicate that properly processed soy protein foods are well tolerated and of good protein value for humans of all ages.

Nutritional aspects of soy protein products

This paper is concerned with the nutritional properties of the soybean and of various food products derived from it. Although primary consideration is given to the protein, cognizance is made of other nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Much of our knowledge concerning the nutritional properties of the soybean has been derived from experiments with animals, and such knowledge is frequently directly applicable to human nutrition. Nutritional experiments with human subjects pose special problems, the most difficult of which is acceptability. People will not eat a certain food simply “because it is good for them.” Thus, the most serious hurdle to be overcome in the development of products containing soybean proteins is frequently not a nutritional one but one of consumer acceptance.