The "History of Non-Dairy Whip Topping, Coffee Creamer, Cottage Cheese, and Icing/Frosting (With and Without Soy) 1900-2013", compiled by the Soyinfo Center, has a rather eyebrow-raising dedication. At the very top of the Dedication and Acknowledgments page, authors William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi make sure to honor ..
. Henry Ford. Father of the automobile Henry Ford? Popularizer of the five-day workweek Henry Ford? The Henry Ford who built a whole town in the Amazon Rainforest in a fit of hubris? Yes, that Henry Ford.
While it gets much less press than his other business endeavors (and his virulent antisemitism), Ford was instrumental in the development of a soy-based product that became the world's very first coffee creamer. Not only that, this marvelous invention was motivated by the same thing that motivated the business magnate to make automobiles in the first place: a passionate hatred of farm animals. Henry Ford had beef with cows It's a known fact that cars replaced horses as the primary mode of American transportation in the 20th century.
Henry Ford himself disparaged horses as being far less reliable and efficient than a motor vehicle for getting around. What's less well-known is that Ford adopted this same derogatory attitude toward cows, sneeringly describing them as "nature's crudest machine". Ford argued that, instead of sinking time and money into keeping a cow for milk, it would be much more efficient to make milk synthetically.
(Of course, nowadays we use .
