I love tofu. We go way back, me and tofu. I’ve written many articles and taught many classes on the health benefits of the amazing white cube, and come to its defense when anti-tofu agents accused it of preposterous crimes.
But according to Dr Brian Wansink PhD and his team at Cornell, my approach may not be the way to win a new generation over to tofu. In his latest study, done with Adam Brumberg and Mitsuru Shimizu PhD at Southern Illinois University, 20-something women were motivated to buy tofu, with no mention of health benefits.
In the study, 502 women, between 20-35 years old, pick tofu because they see it “as a great source of light, inexpensive, energizing protein. “Importantly, they also believed you could cook firm Tofu just like chicken, but you didn’t have to worry about it spoiling,” said co-author Adam Brumberg. Although Tofu is high in calcium and has no cholesterol, most of these women didn’t eat it for its healthy qualities. Instead, they ate Tofu because it is convenient and filling.”
In fact, telling women all about the health benefits of tofu only increased their likelihood of buying it by 12%, whole showing them how inexpensive, convenient and easy to use increased it by 50%.
So it seems that telling people who eat chicken that tofu is cheaper, easy to use, and lasts longer in the fridge is the winning message. That’s good to hear, since tofu and soy have been unfairly maligned in recent years. You may have heard that soy is bad for you, and well, it’s not true.
So bravo to the new generation for getting to the essence of tofu. As the doctors said, it’s easy, cheap and a good replacement for meat.
So if you are looking for some easy, tasty recipe for tofu, here are just a few:
The Tofu Burrito In the Picture Above
