In recent years, consumers have been exhibiting increasing interest in reducing animal fat, cholesterol and calorie intakes. A fat-free sausage would benefit this trend, and in this study, sausages were produced by substituting vegetable oil for pork back fat.

As the fat-substituted sausages did not emulsify satisfactorily, okara was determined to be an essential additive. Even with okara added, however, the color of the fat-substituted sausage was undesirable and, compared to the control product, processing yields, gel strength, and shear values were low. All these shortcomings were mitigated to a remarkable degree by the addition of whey protein, egg whites and blood plasma.

Separately, bacterial counts were taken from okara products. As these counts were found to be high, the okara was subjected to boiling at 100'C for 15 minutes. This pasteurization was found to sterilize the okara to a satisfactory level without any sacrifice in quality. It is worth noting here that the oil holding mechanism at work in okara is a capillary action induced by the overlapping of the empty cell walls.