(First post in this community.)
More and more I've been seeing soy proteins pop up in ingredient-lists for various foods. A cursory glance online says that this is a protein extracted from soybeans, and may have beneficial properties compared to other foodstuffs, but not enough research has been conducted, even though it's been around in edible form for over 60 years.
It's recommended as a source of proteins for vegans... but the thing is I'm seeing this in meat products. Literally all processed meat products where I live have soy proteins in them now. Beef, pork, even chicken. Almost all hot dog brands, every single salami in the stores, most processed chicken dishes, frozen Asian dishes, the list goes on.
The part that concerns me is that there's been no discussion about it anywhere. It's like it's been snuck into people's food and someone's hoping no one notices or speaks up.
So I figured I'd ask you guys what you think. Is this an ingredient in some kind of nutrition-based conspiracy, or was I just unlucky and missed some big important memo that was handed out years ago?
Thank you all, for the replies and insights.
I had guessed at the 'filler' part of soy proteins, but not to the extents you bring up. Literally food for thought. ;)
The nutritional and negative values I had also heard about, but only in passing. It's probably one of those cases where you'd have to eat a bathtub full of the stuff on a daily basis for the negative aspects to fully kick in... but when they're putting the bad stuff into all the foods, that anecdote gets quite close to reality...
To give a little more context regarding local meat products - there is no such thing here as 100% pork-sausages/hot dogs. The closest is a 98% 'keto' hot dog, and it's got soy proteins in it. (The most popular hot dog brand here only has 65% pork in it, most of the remainder is water.)
Strangely enough burgers are one of the few meat products here that are soy-free, but that only applies to the store-bought ones, I have no idea what the hamburger joints are using (and I'm not inclined to find out).
Our biggest pizza chain has soy in almost everything on the menu, only their bacon and pepperoni is still soy free.
But one question remains for me: What about regular soy sauce? How bad is that, compared to all these soy-derivatives?
Soy sauce is fermented.