Soymilk is the product of making tofu and tofu or bean curd was developed in China by Liu An, King of Huainan of the Han dynasty in 164 BC.
It was not until 1929 Dr Kellogg marketed soya based breakfast cereal and soya milk. The earliest references to soymilk were all in connection with the tofu-making process, where the soymilk was mentioned only in passing.
The earliest ancestor of the present term ‘soymilk’ was ‘soy-bean milk’, first mentioned by Trimble in 1897.
Between 1909 and 1916, a Baltimore pediatrician named John Ruhrah developed a variety of soymilk-based infant formula.
In 1911 Li Yu-ying, in a US patent, referred to it as ‘soja milk’’. Li Yu-ying, Chinese living in Paris was the soymilk pioneer in the West. In 1916, a British researcher, Melhuish, in a US patent, first referred to it as ‘soy milk’ and ‘soy bean milk’, two terms which have come to be widely used up to the present.
‘Sobee’ the first commercially produced soymilk-based infant formula was made in 1929 by the Mead-Johnson Company.
The most successful commercial soymilk production, Vitasoy was started by K.S Lo in Hong Kong in 1940.
History of soya bean milk
