What’s holding up the introduction of soya into the human diet in Latin America?

Abstract

The introduction of soya into the human diet in Latin American countries suffers the same problem as foods with similar characteristics. The private industry soon finds that it is much easier to put “fun foods” into the market than it is to try to enrich a product and advertise the fact. Getting involved with the “heavy” subject of nutrition means having difficulties with the health authorities. There seems to be no national nutrition program working in Latin America that is truly effective in alleviating malnutrition. Causes for failure of programs are: substantial funding is spent in research, scientists work hard to solve malnutrition, then someone or something actively opposes introducing new soya technologies or there is an effective argument that a national program cannot be based on imported products. With a world population of 4,000 million and growing at a daily rate of 200,000, food and nutrition must have top priority in national planning.