Guatemalan food company Alimentos Sociedad Anonima (Alimentos SA) launched three soy-based Amelia cream soups in March. Ugandan food maker SESACO Ltd. has introduced SoySip, a just-add-hot-water beverage that comes with packets of ginger and sugar.  As the United States recognizes April as Soyfoods month, the American Soybean Association’s (ASA) World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH) salutes its partners in developing countries for their 2013-2014 introductions of exciting new African and Hispanic foods made with soy protein ingredients.

"We are seeing a bumper crop of new foods containing soy offered by companies and groups that WISHH has assisted through training, product samples and more,” said WISHH Chairman David Iverson, a South Dakota soybean grower. “The U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Agency for International Development (USAID) and soybean checkoff funds are assisting WISHH and its partners to help meet the enormous need for protein in nutritious foods that are also affordable and available for developing country diets.”

Thanks to USDA Foreign Agricultural Service support, WISHH’s many spring 2014 activities include hosting educational conferences in Kenya and Ghana. At these programs, African and U.S. food industry as well as government participants explore opportunities in school feeding and retail programs to offer healthier foods.

WISHH’s USAID-supported work in Liberia is also an example of how production of new soy-based foods creates jobs, including for women, and makes much-needed protein available to local diets. Under the USAID-HANDS program, WISHH and Opportunities Industrialization Centers International have built two processing facilities where women manufacture fortified-blended “Super Gari” cereal made with local cassava. Adding U.S. defatted soy flour helps fill the protein gap that was in the traditional gari.

Click here to see SoySip, Amelia Cream soups and other examples of the new products that WISHH’s partners have introduced in the last year.

Interested in trying to make some international soyfoods yourself?  Click here for WISHH and the World Soy Foundation’s recipe book produced by the National Soybean Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois.

For more information about Soyfoods Month click here. 

U.S. and developing country diets share common ground in that protein is needed for good health. The majority of U.S. consumers (78 percent) agree that protein contributes to a healthy diet and more than half of adults say they want more of it in their diets, reported the NPD Group in a study released in March.

Global protein ingredient market revenues are expected to reach USD 28.90 billion by 2020, according to a new study by Grand View Research. Plant proteins—led by soy-- accounted for over 56 percent of global volumes in 2013, and are expected to continue dominating the market over the next six years, growing at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 6.3 percent from 2014 to 2020. Soy-based ingredients accounted for more than 70 percent of global volumes in 2013.

WISHH is a trade-development program. Since U.S. soybean farmers founded WISHH in 2000, it has worked in 24 countries to improve diets, as well as encouraged growth of food industries. The WISHH program is managed from ASA’s world headquarters in St. Louis.  For more information, visit www.wishh.org.