Most of the soybean isoflavones are left in okara, as well as vitamin B and the fat-soluble nutritional factors, which include soy lecithin, linoleic acid, linolenic acid, phytosterols, tocopherol, and vitamin D.[5] Okara contains some antinutritional factors: trypsin inhibitors (mostly destroyed by cooking), saponins, and soybean agglutinins, which cannot be easily digested.

[3]: 3–4 In Japan it is used in a side dish called unohana which consists of okara cooked with soy sauce, mirin, sliced carrots, burdock root and shiitake mushrooms.

[7] It can make press cake tempeh using ingredients such as brown rice, bulgur wheat, soybeans and other legume and grain combinations.

[8] Okara is also eaten as red oncom by the Sundanese people on Java in Indonesia after fermentation by Neurospora.

[11] Most okara is used as animal feed, especially for farms in vicinity of soy milk or tofu factories.

Some 800,000 tons of soybean curd residue is disposed annually as tofu production byproducts in Japan.

[5] Nevertheless, it remains a challenge to current processes to commercially extract the proteins and nutrients from SCR waste.