Laura: Welcome to another episode of Eating the Past. I’m Laura
Gelfand, and on today’s show we’ll continue exploring the
fascinating history of plant-based eating.
I am thrilled to have Michelle Davis joining me again today from her
home in Los Angeles. Michelle has published five fabulous, best-
selling vegan cookbooks, in over eight languages.
And currently, she is heading up her own weekly newsletter, Stir the Pot,
which is full of fresh, new recipes and all the hot food gossip you can
handle.
In addition to all of that, Michelle also collects vegetarian
and vegan cookbooks and she studied history extensively, so I
cannot think of a better person to join me in chatting about the
famous vegetarian, Henry Ford.
Welcome Michelle!
Michelle: Hi Laura! We’ve all heard about Henry Ford’s role in the creation of
mass-produced automobiles but somehow it’s forgot that he was the first American
“soy boy” but in the best way. He imagined a world where agriculture was more
like industry and soy was his favorite crop.
Laura: Ok, so Henry Ford was pretty obsessed with soy. Could
you tell us a bit more about how this obsession manifested
itself?
Michelle: Ford was both personally and financially invested in making soy
America’s largest crop. Specifically, he believed that soy milk was superior in almost every way to dairy milk.
In a 1921 interview with the New York Tribune, Ford said: “It’s a simple matter to take the cereals that the
cow eats and make them into a milk which is superior to the natural article and much cleaner.
The cow is the crudest machine in the world.”
In the 1930s he opened a soybean research facility in Dearborn,
Michigan and raised 8,000 acres of soybeans. In addition to having a soymilk plant on site,
Ford’s team made plastics and paint for Ford vehicles from soybeans. Many of these
inventions were featured at the 1934 World’s Fair.
The Ford Motor Company even put out lots of books and pamphlets full of recipes for this
“super food” which can be found online at the Henry Ford Center.
Laura: Do you think that any of Ford’s ideas had a long-term
influence on plant-based eating, or even plant-based
manufacturing?
Michelle: I mean, I think Ford played a huge role in the industrialization of the
American farm in general. but more specifically, I have seen a lot of the founders of
this new generation of plant-based meat echo Ford’s idea about how the cow is a
crude machine.
Ethan Brown, CEO of Beyond Meat, said in 2019 “animals spend
massive amounts of energy consuming plants to make protein. We start directly
with the plant material [pea protein] and build from that.” I guess things
haven’t changed that much.
Laura: Clearly Henry Ford was ahead of his time, but he was
also a man of his time, do we have any sense that his
contemporaries thought his eating preferences and his love for
soy was a bit odd?
Michelle: Absolutely. He was seen as very eccentric. I found this cartoon
mocking Ford that ran in a 1921 issue of Farm Mechanic. A cow and horse are
laughing about how Ford keeps trying to get rid of them but they both still have jobs.
100 years later, Ford can claim victory over the horse, but not the cow.
Laura: Thanks so much for joining me today, Michelle. I’m
really looking forward to talking more with you about Mary
Shelley in our next and final show together.
Tune in next week for even more delicious discussion. Join us
for Eating the Past every Sunday at noon, right before the Splendid
Table, on your UPR station.
