Soybeans
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50 free Soybeans trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The soybean is one of the most widely grown crops on Earth, yet most people meet it only as a splash of soy sauce or a block of tofu. Behind those familiar foods is a plant with a long history in East Asia, a late and unlikely arrival in the West, and a list of uses that runs well beyond the dinner table. This quiz turns that story into fun facts you can play. It covers how the plant grows and feeds itself, the people who carried it around the world, the fresh and fermented foods made from it in Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian kitchens, and the factories that turn its oil into everyday products. It suits a food-themed quiz night, a farm club, a classroom unit on plants and agriculture, or anyone curious about what is really in the bottle on the table. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave with a few facts worth repeating.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which American carmaker unveiled a plastic-bodied prototype in 1941 that became known as the soybean car?
Henry Ford
Henry Ford wanted to join farming to industry, so the car wore some fourteen plastic panels on a tubular steel frame. Wartime cuts to car production ended the experiment.
Q 02Which NFL team was founded by A. E. Staley, the company that made Decatur the Soybean Capital of the World?
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears began as the Decatur Staleys, a works team. George Halas took the club north in 1921 with $5,000 from the firm, on condition that it kept the Staley name for a season.
Q 03Which Founding Father, the first American known to mention tofu, posted soybeans home from London in 1770?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin tucked a few of the beans into a letter to John Bartram. He had come across the curd made from them during his time in London.
Q 04At Japan's Setsubun festival in early February, families throw roasted soybeans to drive what out of the house?
Demons
Demons, called oni, are the target, and a relative often plays one in a mask. Afterwards it is customary to eat one roasted soybean for every year of your life, plus one more for luck.
Q 05In Japanese folklore, the fried tofu pouches called abura-age are said to be the favourite food of which animal?
Fox
Fox spirits, or kitsune, are said to love fried tofu, which is why a bowl of udon topped with it is called kitsune udon. The same pouches wrap the rice of inari sushi.
Q 06Which Japanese name, meaning stem beans, is given to young green soybeans boiled in the pod and salted?
Edamame
Edamame were once sold still attached to the stalk, which is where the name comes from. The pods are usually picked by hand so that the plant is not damaged.
Q 07Which legume contains more fat than the soybean, at close to half its weight?
Peanuts
Peanuts are about 48% fat against the soybean's 20%. The soybean wins on protein, though, at 36% of its weight to 25%.
Q 08Since a 1987 trial at The Gazette in Iowa, most American daily newspapers have used soybean oil in which product?
Ink
Ink based on soybean oil came out of a search that began when 1970s oil prices pushed publishers away from petroleum. More than 2,000 plant oil recipes were tested before one worked.
Q 09Which South American country overtook the United States around 2020 as the world's top soybean grower?
Brazil
Brazil turned its Cerrado savanna into productive cropland, work that earned the 2006 World Food Prize. Varieties bred for low latitudes in the 1980s did the rest.
Q 10The soybean's genus name, Glycine, was coined by Linnaeus from a Greek word with which meaning?
Sweet
Sweet is the sense of the Greek glykos. The plant Linnaeus had in mind was a relative with a sugary root, and botanists later moved it out of the genus altogether.
Q 11Bacteria living in nodules on soybean roots pull which gas from the air and turn it into plant food?
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is turned into ammonia inside the nodules by Bradyrhizobium bacteria, so the crop needs less fertilizer. Farmers in the Dust Bowl years planted soy to revive exhausted soil.
Q 12Tofu is made by curdling soy milk and pressing the curds, much like the making of which dairy food?
Cheese
Cheese curds are set with rennet, while tofu makers use mineral salts or acids. The more water is pressed out of the curds, the firmer the finished block.
Q 13Which Japanese soy sauce brand sells its product in a tabletop bottle designed by Kenji Ekuan in 1961?
Kikkoman
Kikkoman was formed in 1917 when eight family brewers in the town of Noda merged into one company.
Q 21Beyond its saltiness, soy sauce is prized for which taste, first identified by a Tokyo chemist in 1908?
Umami
Umami was traced to glutamic acid by Kikunae Ikeda, who proposed it as a basic taste of its own. Fermented sauces rich in glutamate were already seasoning food in ancient Rome.
Q 22Mapo tofu, soft bean curd in a fiery sauce with numbing peppercorns, comes from which Chinese province?
Sichuan
Sichuan diners trace the dish to a Chengdu eatery opened by a couple named Chen in the 1860s or 1870s. Mapo means a pockmarked old woman, so it is sometimes called pockmarked grandma's bean curd.
Q 23Big soy traders pledged in a moratorium not to buy beans from newly deforested farms in which rainforest?
The Amazon
Q 14European Union food labels must highlight soy in bold or capitals because it is one of 14 listed what?
Allergens
Allergens on the list also include milk, eggs and shellfish. Soy proteins are far weaker triggers than those in shellfish, so severe reactions to soy are rare.
Q 15Which Japanese cooking style grills fish or chicken under a shiny glaze of soy sauce, mirin and sugar?
Teriyaki
Teriyaki joins teri, the shine that the sugar gives the sauce, to yaki, meaning to grill or broil. The style is thought to have developed in Japan during the 1600s.
Q 16Which firm cake of whole soybeans, bound together by a white mould, comes from the Indonesian island of Java?
Tempeh
Tempeh is knitted into a sliceable block by a Rhizopus fungus. It was first made in Central Java and was a common food there by about 1700.
Q 17Which salty Japanese paste of fermented soybeans is stirred into dashi stock to make a famous soup?
Miso
Miso fed armies as well as families: it was issued as military rations in Japan's warring-states era, and making it earned feudal lords a good income.
Q 18Roughly three-quarters of the world's soybean harvest ends up being used for which purpose?
Livestock feed
Livestock feed takes most of the crop, mainly as the protein-rich meal left once the oil has been extracted. Growing demand for meat has driven soy planting since the 1980s.
Q 19Soy wax, made by fully hydrogenating soybean oil, is mostly poured into containers to make which household item?
Candles
Candles of soy wax are usually sold in containers because the wax is softer than paraffin and melts at a lower temperature. Additives are needed to make it stand up as a pillar.
Q 20By 2000 soybeans covered more than 70 million American acres, second only to which other crop?
Corn
Corn stayed ahead, yet soybeans had been practically unseen on American farms in 1900. Until the 1920s the plant was grown mainly as forage.
The Amazon pledge came in July 2006, after Greenpeace, McDonald's and European food retailers pressed traders such as Cargill to act. It began as a two-year trial and was later made indefinite.
Q 24Which Japanese breakfast food is whole soybeans fermented until sticky, slimy and strong-smelling?
Natto
Natto gets its texture from the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which once came from the straw the beans were wrapped in. A lab-grown starter replaced the straw in the early 20th century.
Q 25Besides soybeans, which roasted and crushed grain goes into the mash for most Japanese soy sauce?
Wheat
Wheat is what sets most Japanese soy sauce apart from tamari, a darker, richer style that contains little or none of the grain. That makes tamari useful for people who avoid gluten.
Q 26Hoisin sauce, a dark glaze built on fermented soybean paste, takes its name from the Cantonese word for what?
Seafood
Seafood is the literal meaning, yet the sauce contains none and is rarely served with fish. It is better known as a dip for Peking duck and a glaze for roast meat.
Q 27Soybean oil is the main American raw material for which renewable fuel, sold in blends such as B20?
Biodiesel
Biodiesel is usually blended with petroleum diesel, and the B number gives its share: B20 is one part in five biodiesel, while B100 is the pure fuel.
Q 28Soy isoflavones are plant compounds whose shape lets them weakly mimic which human hormone?
Estrogen
Estrogen is imitated closely enough that the compounds can act both with and against the hormone. The soybean plant itself uses them to summon the root bacteria that help it grow.
Q 29Stinky tofu, a fermented snack known for its powerful smell, is a night-market favourite on which island?
Taiwan
Taiwan even has a whole street of stinky tofu restaurants, Shenkeng Old Street in New Taipei. The snack is cooked many ways there but is most often served fried.
Q 30North America's first soybean crop grew in 1765 from seed that Samuel Bowen brought to which colony?
Georgia
Georgia's surveyor-general planted the seed on Skidaway Island because Bowen had no land of his own yet. Bowen went on to make soy sauce near Savannah and sell it to England.