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.

i was just hoping someone could help me out what are 16 year olds suppost to weigh now? i'm confused i am 5'3 and weigh 49 kg but bcoz its like skinny isn't skinny anymore what is skinny? :(

Jan,

You've probably been influenced by second- or third-hand reports of Heather Patisaul's research. I just don't trust "scientists" like her, because she can't stick to her test tubes and do basic research. She's affected by mission creep and has gone beyond her results to voice speculative hypotheses and in fact become a public anti-soy advocate. Conflict of interest? Given her public exposure, it would be extremely embarassing for her at this point if her research started to exonerate soy, so, subconsciously or not, her research is tainted and will continue to be so, in my opinion.

Scientists should perform research and publish results. Speculation and advocacy based on the research results is a role that others should take. Just as you don't want civil servants publicly participating in partisan politics, similarly you don't want basic research scientists participating in public policy health debates.

"There have been no epidemics of large breasted men."

There is an epidemic of pencil-neck men over there though.

Mark, I have never heard of Heather Patisaul and I find that the anti-soy advocates like Dr. Mercola are generally nuts. I'm just basing my opinions on common sense. The pro-soy research always mentions Asians as proof that it is healthy, when in reality, Asians consume very few isoflavones. So if you wanna prove to me that isoflavones are healthy, base it on something else, and I might believe it.

Then of course, the anti-soy ones are hysterical and will even use things like "thyroiditis was first discovered in Japan, the soy is what is causing it" as arguments, which are just as weak and baseless.

So I just use plain old common sense. If people who eat small amounts of isoflavones + larger amounts of fermented soy products are healthy, then that is probably healthy to eat. Now, your typical western vegetarian that consumes tons of isoflavones is not particularly healthy, or even healthy looking (have you seen Moby? I'd do anything not to look like death warmed over, which is what he looks like), so no, I'm not gonna eat tons of isoflavones.

OOH! I made Okara by accident once and ended up mixing it with several other ingredients and pan-frying (not really frying, there was barely any oil present) the mixture in nugget form; very pleasant and satisfying results.
I find that Okara is very nutty and textured... not sure what an okara cookie would be like though...

:p, cookie fight!! hahahahahaha

Thank you webmaster and everybody.
Our okara cookie contains a lot of Okara, so we have to bake cookies for about 3 hours.
And, the cookie is manufactured aiming at the product that it is made for employees' (housewives) family's safety.
Please remember that.

Lisa, according to a chart I just looked at, you are at a fine weight, but honestly don't worry about charts. Please don't think I'm trying to preach to you, but my daughter is 23 and went through some questioning about her size at one time, so I know what you're saying. It's hard sometimes for a teen to figure out about size and weight.

Insurance companies mainly use those charts, and I guess Drs loosely use them. But you go by how you feel and the weight your body tends to be naturally. I'm not sure what you mean about "skinny isn't skinny anymore," but remember that the fashion models and movie stars that young people tend to look up to are not regular people! Yes, we love the way they sing and dance and wear their clothes, but they create an image that we can't (and many times shouldn't) achieve. They are certainly not real in photos because of the way that computers can alter someone's looks nowadays. I'm sure you know that some of them even use drugs to achieve their low weights. So I hope you are not comparing yourself to them.

:) :)

The Okara cookie works as a meal substitute as it expands in your stomach, making you feel full. Usually Japanese people eat it as dinner, burning calories after their meal and during sleep. So essentially, they are only getting 2 meals a day. Oh, and your stomach shrinks after a few days of use.

I found a website http://www.okaracookiediet.com that sells okara diet cookies!!
This is great!! I tried it and lost 25 pounds already!! It will be my 4th month since I started eating this and I am still eating this cookie as a snack! I rather eat this healthy snack and keep my weight than eat junkie high in calorie cookies and gain the weight back…

Dried Okara is finally available in the US and Canada from Spartica Inc of Blaine, Washington, for just $1.49 per pound. Check out our website at http://spartica.ca

I purchased a $30 box of them (9 packages with 7 cookies each). Comes with a mix of plain, green tea and black sesame flavor packs.

I'm type 2 diabetic - so for me, the interesting thing is the larger spike in blood glucose levels within about 15 mins. of consumption. About 2x more than eating the same number of say, Nilla Vanilla wafers (about the same size/weight - but less fiber and more sucrose)

Flavor-wise, they're less sweet than US cookies - and they're to me, sort of like ginger snap texture (very hard and crunchy).

Soy tends to taste pretty plain to me (after making soy milk at home, the leftover bean mush is the okara - and sometimes, like the veg fluff leftover after using a shredding juicer - it's fine as a fiber filler in most baked things, and actually pretty good used as a thickener in chili recipes.

That all said, I find the price really high for what you're getting (at almost $0.75 per little cookie that's 4x the cost of any premium bad-for-you cookie).

I think I get more mileage out of eating a tablespoon full of chia seeds before eating. And they don't spike my sugar levels.

YMMV

those who are describing okara as "only in fertiziler", "inedible", "like eating garbage", "dogfood", or "doesn't belong in our food supply" are being quite offensive to the diets of other cultures. It is just the rest of the soybean that hasn't been squeezed into soymilk. It tastes kind of nutty and has a texture similar to dessiated coconut.

Please do not make fun food that you haven't tried. I've had cookies made from okara (delicious) and have also used the in stirfries myself.

I've tried it!
The cookies are hard, so you can't inhale them. You have to take smaller bites and drink with liquid. They are very dense, but they have a lot of flavor, very intense flavor - I tried dark cocoa (my favorite), a maple syrup (really good) and a sesame. They were all really tasty.

They do start to fill you up, right away. You could do this diet for 1 or 2 meals a day, but I think it would get boring if you did it for 3 meals a day, or tried to do it more than 2 weeks.

But yes, the Okara does work. And it's healthy for you.