“Okara” a New Preparation of Food Material with Antioxidant Activity and Dietary Fiber from Soybean

Okara (OC) is a byproduct of the production of soybean foods such as tofu and soy milk. It is a nutrient-rich product, containing about 25% protein, 20% fat and 33% dietary fiber on a dry basis. Approximately 700,000 tons of okara are produced in Japan each year, some of which has been utilized as a feed for domestic animals and as a fertilizer (O’Toole, 1999). Most of it, however, is discarded as industrial waste because is perishable and other uses for it have not been identified (Ohno & Shoda, 1993), which has created social and environmental problems. Although many papers have reported methods for fermentation (Matsuo, 1997; Jiang et al., 2005; Mizumoto et al., 2006), extraction (Quitain, 2006) and digestion (Kasai et al., 2004), development of effective methods for OC utilization remain an important and difficult challenge. So, as part of a study increase utilization of OC, we have developed a new food product by combining fermented OC with fruits, especially banana. We investigated two properties of this food, reactive oxygen scavenging activity, the effect of including it as part of diet therapy for obesity using dogs as a model.