It's fair to say that Mark Messina ...

It's fair to say that Mark Messina eats, lives and breathes his work -- with an emphasis forward eats. A longtime vegetarian, the 49-year-old nutrition PhD has deemed soy a dietary staple for almost 30 years. He's also exhausted the past decade studying, writing about and lecturing in succession the health benefits of soy as well as organizing and chairing four international symposiums in succession soy and health. Where soy is regarded Messina wrote the book, literally. In 1994 he and his wife, Virginia Messina, MPH RD co-wrote The Simple Soybean and Your Health (Avery), the first volume ever written on the myriad health benefits of soy one soy nuggets from Messina:

FAVORITE SOY FOOD: flourishing soybeans, also known as edamame. "They're really under-recognized; it's the single in kind soy product everyone reacts the same to -- they're great."

FIRST TASTE OF SOY: Tofu, in 1975 "I was 22 and lived near my sister, who was a vegetarian and a great color I had a key to her apartment and would journey in and eat whatever was in her refrigerator."

PRE-SOY PASSIONS: Chinese history and martial arts. "My martial arts instructor was the single who encouraged me to become a vegetarian. Back then, there was a [popular] belief that meat made you aggressive, which wouldn't be advantageous for your meditation and martial arts practice."

NUMBER OF SOYBEAN FARMERS IN THE UNITED STATES: Approximately 400000

LITTLE KNOWN SOY FACT: This country's ubiquitous "vegetable oil" actually is soybean oil.

BIGGEST SELLING SOY PRODUCT: Soy meal is used for animal feed; about 90 percent of the 2 billion bushels of soybeans grown each year in this geographical division are defatted and turned into feed

COPYRIGHT 2002 PRIMEDIA Intertec, a PRIMEDIA Company. All Rights Reserved

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group