Soy proteins
Manufacturing process
Processing of soy beans starts with cleaning, cracking and dehulling. Cracked soy beans are rolled into full-fat flakes, which are the basis for ground and powdered full fat flour.
However, very often, oil is removed from full-fat soy flakes using solvent extraction. De-fatted soy flakes remain and are the basis of a number of specialty functional ingredients like soy protein concentrate and soy protein isolate.
More heat treatment usually means less functionality, although new enzymatic and fermentation technologies allow major modifications of protein properties. As an ingredient, the most elementary form of soy protein is soy flour. It has the highest level of nutrients: full-fat soy flour contains 40 percent protein and defatted soy flour typically has 50 to 54 percent protein.