How Soybeans Took Over the American Diet – Without Anyone Noticing
Most people don’t think of themselves as soybean consumers, but it's in much of our food supply.
By Edward D. Melillo, Professor of History and Environmental Studies
Published September 13, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)
U.S. farmers are projected to produce a record-breaking 4.52 billion bushels of soybeans in 2026, with each American consuming roughly 800 pounds.
Few people recognize that soy is hiding in plain sight throughout the American diet. Soybean oil appears in salad dressings, mayonnaise, baked goods, infant formula, snacks and fried foods; soy lecithin emulsifies chocolate and bread; and soy protein fortifies energy bars, breakfast cereals, and canned soup.
As an environmental historian who studies agriculture and food, I seek to understand a peculiar transformation: how did a plant that most Americans barely ate a century ago become a ubiquitous food ingredient without people noticing?
Chinese farmers domesticated the soybean (Glycine max) from its wild ancestor, Glycine soja, between 6,000 and 9,000 years ago. By the first millennium B.C.E., it ranked among the “five grains,” the staple crops recognized in early Chinese texts.
Soybeans came to North America much later. In 1764, an English sailor named Samuel Bowen arrived in Savannah, Georgia, with a handful of soybeans, a souvenir from several years spent in China. The following spring, Georgia’s surveyor-general Henry Yonge planted Bowen’s unfamiliar “Chinese vetches” and harvested three crops in a single season. In 1767, Bowen received a British patent for his method of producing soy sauce, a fermented condiment resembling the soy sauce already imported from Asia.
The enterprise faded into obscurity after Bowen’s death, and soybeans remained little more than a curiosity in North America. That changed around 1900. U.S. Department of Agriculture plant explorer Frank Meyer collected dozens of soybean varieties in China, many of which government researchers Charles Piper and William Mors helped develop for American farming.