The Okara Cookie

Mmm... cookies for breakfast???

Cookie Crisp already used that pitch. ;) Mmmm, Cookie Crisp. Those and some non-fat frozen yogurt... awesome dessert.

Hmmmm so its soy processing left-overs. YUM!

Got by-product waste?

Make cookies!

So you're supposed to eat the cookies for breakfast AND supper? Or just pick one or the other? Pretty weird. I think I tried the "eating cookies for dinner" diet in college and gained a bit of weight doing it.

I must admit though, it'd be pretty cool to have "calm" cholesterol. :)

Wow, this is too strange. I just visited an organic farm and this was a main component of the compost pile for fertilizer. The farmer passed some around so everyone could feel it. It's this crumbly material that sort of smells like a mixture of cheese and tofu. I can't imagine eating it though after seeing it used in compost. It'd feel to much like eating garbage.

Natalia: That's originally what soy was used for, and I think it's the best use of it. It doesn't belong in our food supply, except for the small amount of traditional, fermented soy products.

Great!! I don't have to eat that TVP processed dog-food stuff anymore! See, I'm learning!

This reminds me of Calorie-Mate, which are apparently dry and not very tasty. I wonder if the cookie has a feature such as that? :P

I wonder if anyone tried them and how they taste

Isn't soy itself a by-product (waste) of industrial agriculture, since its primary purpose is soil enrichment (nitrogen fixation)??

So this is the waste product of a waste product. Uh, okay...

Anybody seen "Soy-lent Green"? They should make these cookies green. That's how I'd like to eat my daily meal of anti-nutrients and feminizing plant estrogens.

Did you know that the estrogens in many plants are a defense mechanism against consumption by animals? They fight the eating by destroying the breeding, chemical castration style. Good for plants, bad for me and you.

The term "by-product" is misleading if it makes you think of industrial waste. We make tofu from soybeans in our home (much better tasting, cheaper, much less packaging to dispose of), and for every 3 pounds of tofu, we end up with about 5 pounds of okara. Throwing it out means that we're not using the soybean as a whole food.

The goal, for health and our ideal weight, is to eat predominantly whole fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, and beans. Soybeans are a whole food, while tofu is not. Using the okara - in cookies, burgers, stir-fries, soups, and a thousand and one other ways the Japanese have developed over centuries - is one way to "use the whole buffalo."

As for the cookies in question here, why buy processed food at all when it's just as easy (and infinitely healthier and more satisfying) to make your own and be sure what's in it. Here's a fabulous, 95% whole foods Chocolate Chip Cookie that mixes in 5 minutes and cooks in about 10:

http://www.fitfam.com/blog/ccc

Enjoy!

If you want to eat a really good snack cracker...try the Medifast Soy snacks, White Cheddar. They are very good. I float them in soup and mix them into my chili just before eating it.

I'm lactose intolerant so if I want to put something on my oatmeal...it's either soy milk or rice milk. I never liked cow milk but adored goat's milk when I had my herd of goat's. I didn't have any problems with goat milk because the fat globules are so tiny...

There aren't any sources for goatmilk up here in the far northern reaches of Wisconsin.

lynnann, I think soy milk tastes delicious. Like melted ice-cream, the vanilla flavor. Sadly I can't drink it, first cause I'm a big milk drinker, so it wouldn't be just a splash on my oatmeal, and also because I'm on thyroid meds, so the isoflavones would bind with my medication and render some of the dosage useless.

I've seen dried (powder) goat milk here, maybe you can get it there? Fresh goat milk, just like you said, is not easily available, and although I've seen the UHT goat milk, it is ridiculously expensive.

If these are like most Japanese cookies, they are not sweet, by U.S. standards. Think biscuit/scone.

On soy: The increasing soy phobia in the West is really paranoid. Soy/tofu/soy milk/okara are less "industrial" than dry pasta or cheese. You can see the stuff being made and buy it in small local shops. Of course, it's also made by large food companies, but you can get fresh tofu and okara at the corner family-run shop, and you can make it yourself, including soy milk. Makiko at justhungry.com related how her mother made soy milk recently, and contestants on popular Japanese "living poor" shows make their own tofu.

There have been no epidemics of large breasted men.

Mark, that can just be related to the fact that the tofu and soy milk are the only isoflavone-laden products they are getting. It is not in their chicken and cereal and everything else. And also that overall, they eat less than westerners do. They eat a bowl of food. Most westerners would die on that little food.

So no, eating other forms of it, in everything, in western amounts, is not ok because Asians eat small amounts of it, only in the tofu since they don't really have a habit of drinking milk, and in the fermented products that don't contain isoflavones. Eating 1/2 an ounce tofu in a stir-fry, like an Asian person does with their bowl of rice and vegetables, is not what I'm talking about here.