Tofu

Cross-reactivity

Case notes

Most parents scanning a label for soy are looking for the word "soy" — and tofu doesn't contain it. Tofu is a soy-derived ingredient, but it appears on ingredient panels under its own name, and just as often under the aliases "bean curd" or "soybean curd." Those two alternates are the trickiest, because "bean" reads like a generic vegetable term rather than a specific soy flag. All three words point to the same thing: a soy ingredient carrying soy's storage proteins.

Tofu sits in two allergen families at once. It belongs to the Legumins (11S Globulins) family, which includes Gly m 6 (soy legumin), and it also carries Vicilins (7S Globulins) proteins such as Gly m 5, also known as beta-conglycinin. These are seed storage globulins, described in our dataset as stable through processing and capable of persisting even in refined products. Reactions in this family are generally characterized as moderate to severe, with the vicilin group noted as able to cause anaphylaxis.

There's a second reason tofu deserves a careful look on a label: shared structure across legumes. Soy vicilin (Gly m 5) shows moderate structural homology with peanut vicilin (Ara h 1), and soy legumin (Gly m 6) with peanut legumin (Ara h 3). The curated note here is that roughly 5 to 10 percent of people with peanut allergy react to soy. That makes "bean curd" on a menu or a packaged meal worth logging alongside related label names like soy lecithin, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and lupin, so you can see your own patterns over time.