Monday, May 19, 2008

On Solae and GMO Soy

As if being vegan didn't already cause enough dietary conundrums at the supermarket, now you have to worry about the source of vegan ingredients too. Is it organic? Genetically modified? Local? Overly processed? It's enough to make your head explode. Needless to say, I was a tad depressed when an anonymous poster wrote this in response to my ice cream cake post: "BTW So Good ice cream and soy milk is produced using Solae (a modified GMO soy product from Dupont and Bunge corporation). Soale is used in So Good products as well as many Yves products (they usually even have a Solae logo on the back of them). Stay away from them if you don't want to eat frankenfood." Well, as it turns out, said anonymous poster was partially misinformed. Solae is not a genetically modified food. I emailed SoGood and Yves Canada and Yves USA (who do use Solae (as you can see here), as does Mori-Nu), and they all assured me that they use non-GMO soy. Interestingly, Yves wrote that "the soy is the only ingredient that we will make a statement about regarding non-gmo; other ingredients have not been sourced to be non-gmo."

All that being said, Solae is not organic, and it is made by DuPont who has a less than stellar environmental record. Solae is also used to feed the livestock slaughtered in factory farms all over North America. So, what's a vegan to do?