Ingredients and Food Facts
MISO MAYO is made from soy without dairy, cholesterol, eggs, wheat, gluten, or sugar.
MISO
"Miso sae areba . . . everything's allright as long as there is miso."
Our miso is a savory high-protein seasoning made of naturally fermented soybean paste from Hawaii. A complete and concentrated source of protein, vitamin B-12 and the 8 essential amino acids, miso is a living cultured food containing lactic acid-forming bacteria and other health-giving microorganisms and essential nutrients. It contains a fraction of the sodium used in moderate to low-salt diets (only 5.5-13% sodium chloride versus 99% in table salt).
Prized for more than 2000 years in China and Japan for its digestion-aiding enzymes and the ability to help assimilate other foods, miso comes in a wide range of flavors, colors, textures and aromas and is used as an all-purpose seasoning.
By the way, did you know that soybeans contain more high-quality protein (35-36%) than any other plant or animal food?
Also, miso around the world is made with a koji starter. Koji is steamed rice that has had koji-kin, or koji mold spores, cultivated onto it. This magical mold, for which the official scientific name is Aspergillus Oryzae, creates several enzymes as it propagates, and these are what break the starches in rice into sugars that can be fermented by the yeast cells, which then give off carbon dioxide and alcohol.
An excellent reference is The Book of Miso: Food for Mankind by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi. Published by Ballantine Books, Random House. 1976.
UMAMI
Our secret ingredient.
Salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and . . . umami. The fifth taste sensation, umami is a Japanese word and concept of some antiquity, and is said to involve all the senses, providing one with a feeling of perfect quality in a taste, or of some special emotional circumstance in which a taste is experienced.
Savoury, proteiny, safisfying - umami describes the full-bodied flavor of soy sauce, chicken soup, aged cheese, cooked tomato, mother's milk, fish stock, cured meat. Along with salt and sugar, umami is a primal signal about the food we are eating - in the case of umami, about the presence of proteins and amino acids. It blooms in the mouth and hits the back of the tongue.
And that is why so many people keep buying MISO MAYO!
For more information: Society for Research on Umami Taste at srut.org/index
(P.S. Researchers in California and New Jersey have discovered that the T1R1 flavor receptor on the tongue is shaped like a Venus flytrap, allowing the amino acid glutamate to remain in the "trap" longer giving off the umami flavor sensation. Look for flavor developers to begin enhancing foods with an "umami flavor", hopefully reducing the use of salt and consequently promoting healthier eating.)
VEGAN, VEGETARIAN, VEGGING OUT . . .
Vegetarianism was first recorded by Pythagoras of Samos around the fifth century B.C. - the cardinal rule being "never take any substance into the stomach that once had life." Greek philosophers like Plato, Epicurus and Plutarch were also "vegetarians". The term was popularized by the Vegetarian Society in England nearly 150 years ago. Vegetarianism usually permits the eating of eggs, dairy products and honey, as well as the wearing of animal products like leather, wool and silk.
"Veganism is the practice of living on fruits, nuts, vegetables, grains and other wholesome nonanimal products," sayeth Yorkshireman Donald Watson in 1944 - allowing also that mother's milk is permitted for babies. Watson, 94 years young in 2005, founded the newsletter "The Vegan News" and prefers the VEE-gan (hard g) pronunciation.
Rawists prefer theirs . . . raw.
Pescetarians will eat seafood, but not meat or fowl.
Fruitarians, who eat only raw fruits, seeds and nuts and generally avoid harming the plant from which they come.
Lacto-ovo vegetarians adhere to the standards of vegans but eat dairy products and eggs.
Lacto vegetarians allow dairy, but not eggs.
Pollo-vegetarians avoid red meat, but eat fowl.
Flexitarians are your almost-vegetarians. They generally avoid meat, but sometimes break the bond and make exceptions.
(Excerpted and mangled from 1/30/05 NEW YORK TIMES Sunday Magazine's "On Language by William Saffire", and from Specialty Food Magazine)
FYI - "The macrobiotic diet is based loosely on Japanese eating patterns and principles of Traditional Asian Medicine. The traditional macrobiotic diet is vegan, consisting of whole grains, vegetables, seaweeds, fermented foods, nuts, seeds, and seasonal fruits . It excludes meat, eggs, and dairy products, and fluid intake is restricted, although some more liberal forms of the macrobiotic diet include fish and other animal products." By Tania Shaw from the CAM Handbook
CANOLA OIL
We take ours expeller-pressed . . .
Canola is a specific edible type of rapeseed, developed in the 1970s, which contains about 40 percent oil. The expeller-pressed canola oil in MISO MAYO is produced through a chemical-free mechanical process to extract oil from seeds and nuts, a process that is an alternative to the hexane-extraction method used for many conventional oils. Our oil is not hydrogenated and contains no trans fats.
Nutrition experts recognize canola oil as having the best fatty acid ratio, comparing it favorably with olive and flax oil. Canola oil has the lowest level of saturated fat (6%), it is relatively high in mononsaturated fat (58%) and has a moderate level of polyunsaturated fat (36%). The euricic acid in Canola Oil is less than .5%.
["Monounsaturated fatty acids found in canola oil have been found to help protect your cardiovascular system and reduce the risk of certain metabolic disorders such as 'insulin resistance' and diabetes, and are linked with a lower rate of cancer," according to The Omega Diet by Artemis Simopoulos, M.D. and Jo Robinson.]
Find more information about canola oil at: www.wholefoodsmarket.com/wholebody/ingredients/canola.html
... and for our Blood Type AB customers who are "Eating Right 4 Your Food Type" (by Dr. Peter D'Adamo), MISO MAYO is right up your alley!