If there’s anything that I’ve learned in my short time observing tofu, it’s that the food – often criticized as bland mass – can reflect life’s ups and downs.
Earlier this week, there was an up, when Hodo Soy Beanery opened its organic tofu shop in Oakland, Calif.
On Thursday, there was a bit of a low when Quong Hop & Co., a South San Francisco tofu company, was ordered to pay $90,000 in fines for failing to keep its plant clean.
The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office announced the fines that covered the past two years, reporter Sean Maher of the San Mateo County Times wrote.
The company – which says it was one of the first tofu businesses in the United States – essentially did not keep its food area free of pests, according to the article.
UPDATE: I’ve added information from the company owner since I originally posted this entry on Wednesday.
AFC Trading & Wholesale of California has placed stickers in English on some of its Chinese-made frozen bean curd sheets and sticks after officials found undeclared sulfites in them, the company reported.
The lack of English labeling prompted the Los Angeles company to issue a recall Sept. 7 with the federal government.
AFC warned people who are allergic to sulfites not to eat products with the “PO# 378″ on them.
The problem occurred because this batch, which was shipped in March or April, contained sulfites but that was only noted in Chinese, AFC owner Jackson Wu said Wednesday.
You kind of expect it from this West Coast crowd - what with their entrepreneurial ways and toasted wheat bread sandwiches with one piece of organic lettuce stuck in the middle.
Oh, wait. I’m from Northern California. And I dig bean curd.
But for a long time, Northern Californians have thought in differentways.
Stanford Hospital & Clinics this week continued this trend by announcing that patients staying there can dine on local, organic food that will largely come from companies within 200 miles of Stanford, Calif.
What caught my attention on the menu: Smoked tofu.
It’s always disappointing when you hear about humans tampering with food. It’s even more appalling when it’s bean curd that reportedly includes a formaldehyde-methanol mixture.
Police in Indonesia this week apparently seized gallons of formalin that were used to make tofu in a Cipinang, East Jakarta factory, according to a Jakarta Post article.
The public informed Jakarta police about the use of the ingredient, which the University of Minnesota reports “is used as a fixative to preserve tissue samples in health care laboratories.”
The article neither listed the tofu brand name nor stated whether the product is shipped to other countries. Investigators also did not provide a motive.
When I was searching for information about the diets of centenarians on Okinawa, I came across this CNN video.
Michael Booth’s recent article in The Sunday Times about people living so long in this part of Japan sparked my interest. Of course, tofu was involved.
It looks like there is a combination of factors – including eating bean curd – that is contributing to long and active lives for many Okinawans. Apparently, there is a high percentage of residents who live past the age of 100.
One observation: Okinawans are living their lives with the thought that something – longevity in this case – is possible.
And they don’t have the diseases that have surfaced in North America, according to CNN.
Eating soybean cake on a regular basis as part of a balanced meal might actually help extend a person’s age, experts believe.
In a June 7 article in The Sunday Times, author Michael Booth wrote about traveling to Okinawa to investigate why so many residents of this group of Japanese islands are living to at least 100 years old.
That number is estimated to be more than 800 people, he said.
On Okinawa, Booth quoted Craig Willcox, a Canadian gerontologist and medical anthropologist who has studied the residents and their health.
Among many factors, Willcox gives the nod to soybean cake as contributing to better health for Okinawans. “They have lower cholesterol and suffer less from heart disease, arteriosclerosis and many cancers,” he told Booth.
Tofu is loaded with protein. It’s low in saturated fat. It lacks cholesterol. If the tofu you’re eating has calcium, that’s another plus, too.
These are some of the conclusions of dietitian and author Jo-Ann Heslin, who recently posted a piece - “Tofu – Think Outside the White Block” – on HealthNewsDigest.com.
Using tofu can help reduce the risk of heart disease, she writes in her post. “No one is suggesting that tofu alone is a magic food but as a substitute for higher fat, higher cholesterol, lower calcium choices it is a healthy addition to your diet,” she says later.
She touches upon one controversy swirling around soy – specifically isoflavones used in supplement form. That is, if eaten as a supplement in large amounts, the risk of breast cancer might increase.
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