SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Spectrum Foods is making it easy to get more soy in your diet.

Add water and an ingredient or two to the Springfield company's boxed mixes and you have soy-enriched brownies, pancake batter or meatless chili. There are 14 soy-enriched products in the Premier Harvest line, and Spectrum is working toward getting them into supermarkets nationwide.

"We would love for people, when they think of soy foods, to think of us," said Rob Kirby, marketing vice president for Spectrum Foods. Just as some consumers associate the green packaging of Healthy Choice foods with lowfat products, Kirby would like consumers bent on soy to rely on Premier Harvest.

"It's a lofty goal," he admits.

The company was established by Al Maiocco in 1973. At that time, the company manufactured foods for diabetics, including the first sugar-free packaged cake mixes and frosting mixes, under the corporate name BatterLite Foods.

In the 1980s, liquid and powdered saccharin sweetener was added to the product line, as were low-sodium and lowfat Pritikin foods. The company name was changed from Thompson Kitchens to TKI Foods in 1992.

"Everyone who walked in was looking for cabinets," said Spectrum president Rick Maiocco, son of the company founder.

TKI, which manufactured private-label sweeteners, was sold in 1998, and the next year, Spectrum Foods was established. It employs 25 full-time workers.

Rick Maiocco, an avid golfer and cook, is a healthful eater who prepares meals with many of Spectrum's products.

"If I tell my kids I'm making soy taco mix, I might get an adverse reaction. But if I put it in a soft taco shell with lettuce and tomato and everything else, they love it," Maiocco said.

Another division of the company makes and packages store-brand products, such as sugar packets and taco-filling mixes.

And then there's the chemical-free soybean oil, one that is processed in a way that allows it to retain its freshness longer than those normally used in restaurants.

The company is testing the oil in Springfield-area restaurants.

But the company's main push now is Premier Harvest. The 1-year-old line includes breakfast cereals, baking and pancake mixes, flour, oil, cooking spray, meatless meal mixes (chili, sloppy joes and tacos) and Soy Anytime! crunchy granules of soy flour and rice that can be sprinkled on yogurt, cereal and other foods to boost soy intake. Most of the items range in price from $2.50 to $4.50.

"The idea was to come out with a line of products that would be more in line with the normal eating habits of the Western diet," said Kirby, who noted many Americans don't know how to cook with tofu or tempeh.

"People read all these positive things about soy foods, and when they go to the supermarket, it can be hard making a selection," Kirby said.

Soy has not been an easy sell with American consumers who don't know how to cook with it and might even harbor a bias against it.

"In Asia it's always been human food, and over here, except for the oil, it's been animal feed. There's this sense that people shouldn't eat what animals are eating, I guess," Maiocco said.

"When a new soy product comes out, everybody buys it," said Elizabeth Estep, marketing manager for Food Fantasies, a store that specializes in natural and organic foods. "But when they come back to buy it again, that's good."