Jimmy Macaione, age 12, of Phoenix, Arizona, for his question:
What exactly, is lecithin?
Phosphatidyl clorine is one of the vital chemicals needed by living cells to carry on their activities. And phosphatidyl clorine is lecithin. The human body can manufacture lecithin from various foods and vast stores of it are created by plants. Chances are, you downed a quota of lecithin this morning, along with your toast, pancakes or eggs.
Lecithin is a very complex chemical containing phosphorous and chlorine. Quantities of these two elements are dangerous and even poisonous. Yet living cells need traces of them to produce healthy tissues and also to maintain the everyday processes of metabolism. Lecithin goes through highly complex chemical maneuvers to deliver these trace elements in the right quantities at the right times and places. The chemical name of lecithin, phosphatidyl clorine, reveals the structure of its molecules plus a few hints about its chemical behavior. The name lecithin is coined from a Greek word for egg yolks egg yolks are very rich in the vital food substance.
Most of the lecithin we eat, however, is not concealed in eggs or in any sort of animal food. It is donated to our diets by the plant world and the most generous donator is the speckled, pea sized seed called the soybean. Nutrition experts just cannot say enough in favor of the soybean. And Americans supply three quarters of the soybean crop for the whole world. Each year we harvest half a million bushels valued at around two billion dollars.
The little beans, yellowish or blackish or freckled with pinkish browns, are good enough to eat like peanuts. But most of them are processed before they go to market. A 60 pound bushel of whole beans contains more protein than 60 pounds of steak, more calcium than 30 quarts of whole milk, plus minerals, vitamins and an assortment of amino acids. One fifth of the bushel weight is oil, light and digestible soybean oil. The rest is soybean meal and the meal contains the protein. It would not, of course, be sensible to restrict our diets to a single food. But if this became necessary for a while, perhaps the best Item to select would be soybeans.
The fresh beans from the field are processed by washing, screening and roasting. Alcohol or some other hydrocarbon solvent is then added to separate the oil from the meal. Sometimes this is done by pressure. More complex processes are used to separate other products for various purposes. One of these soybean products is the pale, gumaay liquid called lecithin. It may be dried into a powdery form and lots of it is sold to flour mills. It is often added to enrich bread and cake flour and added to give chewable body to candies. Puddings and other dessert mixes often are enriched with lecithin and every molecule of lecithin we eat goes to work for our busy cells.
If you like the flavor of soybeans, you will like the taste of plain lecithin. You can buy it as a gummy liquid or in powder form and people who need special diets may take lecithin in capsule form. In any case, you are bound to get an adequate supply of the vital chemical in the average diet. If there is none in your baked foods, there is sure to be some in your beef. Soybean fodder supplies most of the protein fed to our cattle.