How to process domestic soybeans into "golden beans"

Drink a cup of thick soy milk in the morning, eat a Mapo tofu rice cover at noon, and drink porridge at night with a few pieces of fermented tofu. Our daily lives depend on a wide variety of traditional soy products. They are not only an important source of plant protein for people, but also a delicacy on the table of Chinese people.

With the continuous breakthrough of soybean processing technology in China, in addition to traditional soybean oil, tofu, soy milk, soy milk, people can eat more and more abundant soybean products, and their quality and price are constantly improving. A grain of humble domestic soybeans, after processing reborn, changed into "golden beans."

China has a long history of soybean processing, 90% of domestic soybeans are used for food processing

Soybean is rich in nutrients and has a reputation as "the meat of the field and the king of nutrition". China is the hometown of soybeans and the birthplace of soybean processed foods. As early as 5000 years ago, Chinese people began to cultivate and eat soybeans. In 500 BC, Chinese people made soybean milk for the first time, and the world's first tofu was made in the Western Han Dynasty. In the Northern Song Dynasty, soybean oil was successfully extracted from soybeans. After that, bean curd, soy milk, bean paste, frozen tofu and other processed products have come out one after another.

With the development of science and technology, there are more than 12,000 kinds of food, drinks, medicines, feed products, textiles, fine chemicals, building materials and biological products with soybeans as raw materials in the world.

"Compared with foreign countries, soybeans in our country are mainly used for food processing." Han Tianfu, chief scientist of the national soybean industry technology system and researcher of the Institute of Crop Science of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told reporters that in a broad sense, soybean processing mainly includes soybean oil, food processing and feed processing, while China mainly focuses on the processing of traditional soybean products and protein products.

Why is there such a difference? Yu Hansong, a post scientist of the national soybean industry technology system and a professor at the School of Food Science and Engineering of Jilin Agricultural University, explained: "Compared with foreign soybeans, domestic soybeans have relatively low yield and low oil yield, but their protein content is very high. Therefore, foreign soybeans are mainly oil extraction and feed soybean meal, while domestic soybeans are mainly food processing." Data show that from 2012 to 2015, the consumption of soybean raw materials in China's food industry ranged from 10 million tons to 11.5 million tons. The output of domestic soybeans in recent years is about 12 million tons, that is, more than 90% of domestic soybeans are used for food.

The market demand of soybean processing industry is very large. According to statistics, in 2015, the annual processing volume of soybeans in China reached 92 million tons, of which about 80 million tons were used for oil processing, and this part was mostly imported soybeans as raw materials; the other 10 million tons were used for food processing, mainly domestic soybeans.

Processing technology continues to break through, soybean by-products are worth hundreds of times

Nowadays, in some supermarkets in Northeast China, a kind of "high dietary plant fiber meat" produced by Jilin Fred Food Co., Ltd., which adopts the research and development technology of national soybean industry technology system, sells for 10~20 yuan/catty, which is loved by many consumers. This is made from bean dregs.

As a by-product of soybean processing, okara is either discarded or converted into feed. As a feed, the market price of bean dregs per catty is 0.1 yuan, and after processing into "plant fiber meat", the added value has increased by more than 100 times.

Soybean meal, also a by-product of soybean processing, is transformed into a functional salt-soybean peptide salt. The team led by Wang Fengzhong, a researcher at the Processing Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, hydrolyzed the protein in soybean meal into active peptides by enzymes, extracted them and added them to common salt. "Compared to common salt, soybean peptide salt has the function of lowering blood pressure. Moreover, the peptide itself has the function of a flavor enhancer, which is more suitable for the relevant people to eat." Wang Fengzhong told reporters that once put into production, can make the original abandoned soybean meal worth a hundred times.

"The comprehensive utilization of soybean dregs and soybean meal is an innovation of our industrial 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 technology equipment and technology research and development. His team not only developed high dietary fiber plant meat series products, but also established a high dietary fiber processing technology system with by-products and whole beans as raw materials, gradually improving and establishing a system engineering integrating the R & D, pilot test and industrialization of high dietary fiber series products. "Taking bean dregs as an example, about 1.5 tons of bean dregs will be produced for every ton of soybeans processed. According to the current annual production of about 20 million tons of wet bean dregs in China, all of them will be utilized and developed into products, which is equivalent to saving 4 million tons of grain, which is equivalent to an increase of about 30% in the total annual soybean output in China." Yu said that once these by-products are used efficiently, 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, the traditional manual production into factory production, such as the vacuum compression process of frozen tofu, the standardized production of thousand-page tofu, etc.; the other is the functionalization of ordinary foods, that is, the development of functional and health foods, and the extraction of nutrients from soybeans for reprocessing.

Wang Yan, assistant researcher of Processing Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has been doing soybean quality evaluation and food development for several years."Worry-free soybean milk powder" is a functional product developed by her and team members. "Daylily is also known as Nepenthea. It has the effect of anti-depression and promoting sleep. It combines with soybean milk powder to make soybean milk powder have health care functions." Wang Yan introduced, In addition to worry soybean milk powder, Also have health care function Lunaxin enrichment powder, Bean sprout powder and other more than 30 kinds of high value-added products have been developed in the laboratory.

The market prospect is broad, so we should tap the potential in high-quality food and graded utilization.

With the continuous breakthrough of deep processing technology, there are more and more leading soybean processing enterprises with an output value of hundreds of millions of yuan. At the same time, some powerful investors and distributors are optimistic about the potential of soybean food market and turn to soybean products industry, which makes the competition in soybean processing market more intense and promotes the development of the industry.

Today, under the background of carrying out structural adjustment and mode transformation, especially reducing grain and increasing beans, the establishment of high-quality edible route of domestic soybean ushered in opportunities for processing industry. As people's demand for healthy diets increases, the market demand for soy products as a source of high-quality protein is expanding.