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Lecithin was first discovered in 1850 when Maurice Gobley, a French scientist, worked in his lab and eventually succeeded in separating the emulsifier-like fatty compound found in egg yolk. Naming the compound after the Greek word for “egg yolk”, lekithos, the first commercially available lecithin was mostly obtained from egg yolk, until the 1930s when the use of soy products in processed foods arose.

The compound lecithin was initially discovered in the by-product of soybean processing. After the soybeans were processed and its oils extracted, the liquid waste that is left is made to undergo a “degumming” process. This was done in order to separate its lecithin content. Since then, most of the lecithin sold in the market today are taken from soya. Read more . . .

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Where and how did lecithin get its name? Was it named after some brilliant scientists who discovered it while working night and day in a laboratory? In fact, the real story is a little blander than that. Lecithin actually comes from the word “lekithos”, which is the Greek word for “egg yolk.”

But why would anyone name it after something so common as an egg yolk? The reason is because that is where the French scientist Maurice Gobley first found lecithin. In 1805, some scientists had just extracted a fat-like Read more . . .