Soybeans Products Put Meat on Table : Mail-ordered foods resolve dilemma for Ojai family. Items taste amazingly like regular hamburger.

Cynthia Vail, an Ojai accountant, had a problem. Something right out of a situation comedy, if one could conceive of one in an Ojai setting.

Her husband, John, had become a strict vegetarian. But she and her daughters--Julia, now 13 and Lindy, now 3--hadn’t. It meant two kinds of entrees for every meal. For years. “It was getting tough to cook for him,” Cynthia Vail recalled.

Then, six months ago, a mysterious pamphlet arrived in the mail. And suddenly, everything was all right for everybody in the family. What happened? And what does this have to do with the environment?

The answer to both questions is soybeans. The Vails are eating soybeans. The food that Robert Rodale, a sage of the vegetarian movement, asserts “saves three lives”--yours, an animal’s and the planet’s.

Ugh, you’re thinking as you read this, Earthwatch is trying to get other folks in the county to do this: switch to eating something that tastes like boiled dirt just because it requires two calories of fossil fuel to produce per calorie of protein instead of 80.

Switch away from red meat because it requires 2,500 gallons of water per pound to produce compared to grain--which requires 25 gallons of water per pound--while causing three-fourths of the topsoil loss on the Great Plains.

Switch because of a week’s worth of alarming reports, which came via the evening news, on lax meat inspection.

Yes. You’ve gotten the point. But the good news is that those who switch, including the Vails, no longer have to forgo the taste of meat.

“That’s been the biggest breakthrough--it tastes just like meat,” said John Vail. What happened was that Cynthia Vail mail-ordered something she saw in a catalogue from Harvest Direct, which specializes in soy-based foods seasoned to taste amazingly like regular hamburger.

A lot of what she ordered--and continues to order--through the mail is available in stores. Locally, that would be stores like Lassen’s, Mrs. Gooch’s and Rainbow Foods.

Many Ventura County folks are choosing “meatless meat” when they dine out and now there are good products on the market for dining at home.

The taste depends on personal preference. I’m particularly big on the convenience. The Vails order the add-water-and-stir type. Local stores provide products prepackaged in patties, chunky chili, hot dogs--even bacon. Wildwood, Soy Power, Soy Deli and White Way are some of the brands to look for. Look in the dairy counter between the cheeses and the tofu.

These products are all cousins of tofu--also called tempeh or (rather joylessly) textured vegetable protein.

Despite the exotic names, they’re not imports. Soy products are as American as can be, occupying a special place in our agriculture because farmers rotate corn and soybean crops.

The corn is extremely destructive to the soil and the soybean plants restore the soil’s fertility--a huge environmental benefit.

Also, Americans dominate the world in production of this crop, although most of it nowadays is fed to livestock. Environmentalists are quick to note it takes more than 15 pounds of soybeans--and the zillions of gallons of fresh water sucked from our great plains aquifers--to produce a single pound of edible beef. A pretty inefficient business, when you think about it.

But in Asia, they long ago learned to turn each pound of soybeans directly into several pounds of food like miso soup, tofu and soy milk. (Also in Asia, soybeans are credited with holding down cancer rates--a matter only recently substantiated by U.S. medical researchers.)

Benjamin Franklin, the patron saint of American thriftiness, introduced basic tofu to America. Henry Ford, of all people, tried to popularize it. He even stressed the environmental angle. These days we have better ways to cook it--such as tacos. Last year, Americans bought $50 million worth of soybeans and sales are expected to double in two or three years, according to Pat Globitz, publisher of Soya Blue Book, an industry reference work.

So that’s how the Vails started eating various soy-based meals three times a week. And their vegetarian paterfamilias made a point of mentioning all the fruits and vegetables that go into a nutritious diet.

He also couldn’t resist getting in a final zinger:

“Now that there’s something that tastes just like meat, why kill a cow?”

FYI

Harvest Direct soybean-based food products are available by calling (800) 835-2867. Some local retailers carrying soybean-based foods are Lassen’s Health Foods in Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Oxnard and Camarillo, Mrs. Gooch’s in Thousand Oaks and Rainbow Bridge Natural Food Store in Ojai.