♪ (meditative calm music) ♪
(Ann Yonetani) It's true that natto
has this very unique gooey, sticky texture
but to me that's fun!
You know, it's interesting.
(laughter)
It's something to talk about.
Natto truly is the Japanese cheese.
It's a vegan version
of a really complex, umami-rich,
like washed rind cheese.
And yeah, many cheese lovers
really enjoy natto
and see that parallel in flavor profile.
It's a food that I feel like
more people need to have access to
because I think that
can benefit a lot of people
by incorporating it into their diets.
Hi, my name is Ann Yonetani,
I'm the founder and owner of NYrture Food
which makes natto in Brooklyn, New York.
Natto is really a ubiquitous food,
an everyday food that's most commonly
eaten for breakfast.
Yes, I feel like I have sort of taken on
the mission of being a cheerleader,
a spokesperson,
an evangelist for natto in America.
And it really is because I truly believe
that natto is just so special,
so unique...
I think if there's any food on earth
that deserves to be called a superfood
is natto.
♪ (slow piano music) ♪
It's good.
In a weird way, I'm an urban farmer,
an urban micro farmer.
I grow bacteria,
and those bacteria eat soybeans,
and they help me produce natto.
Yeah, I'm a nerd.
(laughter)
This is day one of
Nyrture's natto-making-process.
Every batch starts with this step,
which is me hand-sorting
through the beans.
I kind of love this step--
I love this step and I hate this step
but there's something very meditative
about the process
and our beans are beautiful,
I mean, they're so clean,
you know, 99.9% of them look fantastic.
I'd like to think that
every single natto bean we sell
has passed underneath my eyes.
I'm a microbiologist, actually,
that's how I got into this business,
just being fascinated by
the power of the microbial world.
I'm interested in how consuming
some of these good bacterias,
these probiotic-types of bacteria
in the form of fermented food
has that impact in human health.
Our first products--
So those little white dots
are actually chemically-pure umami taste.
There is written documentation
describing natto for over a 1000 years.
In the West and in America
is virtually unknown.
It makes me think that if more adults
will come to natto with just an open mind,
a lot more of them might find
that they actually like it. (chuckles)
This might be excessive
but I wash them ten times,
you know, soak them, entertain them,
and then, dump out the water.
And then, they sit in the bath overnight,
so that the beans are able to hydrate.
They will swell to over twice
their weight and volume.
When I first learned how to make natto
from a fifth-generation
natto-maker in Tokio,
he told me that the most important step
was to choose the best beans you could
to start with,
and he was right.
The best natto soybeans in America
are grown in the northern midwest,
mostly in North Dakota.
And something that
a lot of people don't realize
is that most of the natto
that is made in the world,
i.e. the natto that is made
and sold in Japan,
it's actually, most of it,
is made from US-grown soy,
and the bulk for that, also,
from North Dakota, specifically.
We also have black soybeans
and then, we have another brown bean
which is certified organic.
Natto soybeans are very different
from the typical commodity soybean.
That's their non-GMO certified definition.
But soybeans that are used to make natto
by any decent natto-maker
are really beans that have been
carefully selected over generations
to be ideal for this particular
fermentation process.
♪ (music) ♪
What makes Nyrture's natto unique:
Our natto is fresh,
it's never been frozen,
unlike all the natto
that is imported from Japan--
it's frozen before export.
That's important,
one, because freezing and thawing food
can really affect its taste and texture,
but two, if people are motivated
by eating natto for its health benefits,
freezing and thawing,
also, significantly damage
those health benefits, as well.
(Liza) How is it?
Good, they're nice and soft,
has some sugar to it, it's sweet...
It has at least three
completely unique properties
that are unlike any other food on earth.
Number one, it's probiotic.
It's fermented with Bacillus subtilis,
which is a member
of the healthy gut microbiome,
so it's a probiotic bacteria
that isn't found in any other
fermented food certainly in the West.
The second one is that
natto is the most concentrated
food source of vitamin K2
of any food on earth,
and it beats any other
by an order of magnitude.
Vitamin K2 is essential for bone health
but it's also very important
for cardiovascular health.
It doesn't matter
how much calcium you eat,
if you don't have enough vitamin K2
to help recruit it out of your bloodstream
and bring it to to your bones,
it accumulates and causes
arterial calcification,
and leads to heart disease.
The third reason is that
there's an enzyme named after natto;
it's called nattokinase,
and this enzyme is
a natural blood thinner.
It has an enzymatic activity which,
actually, has been shown
to be capable of
breaking down blood clots,
and the only natural source of it
is natto.
Well, there are some cardiologists
who are starting to promote natto.
We're really hoping to work
with healthcare providers
to educate them and help them
educate their patients.
Whether your reason is the vitamin K2,
or the nattokinase content,
or the probiotics,
why not at least give it a try
and eat the food which is,
one, delicious, I think,
two, cheaper than taking a pill,
and three, you get all three
of these benefits at once.
They sit here and age and acquire
flavors in a week or so.
Many Japanese people have told me
that our natto is the most delicious natto
that they've ever had
either here or even in Japan,
which is great to hear.
I've also gone to
the National Natto Competition in Japan
and met many natto producers from Japan,
and also have gotten very high praise
from natto producers in Japan.
♪ (exciting music) ♪
I think the favorite moment of mine
in the entire week-long-process
of making the natto
is that moment after the fermentation
is complete
when I get to just pull back the film
on a fresh tray of natto
and just see that neba-neba stickiness,
those spiderwebs
sort of coming off the beans--
And sort of, the more resistance
I have from those strings,
the better I know the fermentation is,
the better the natto,
so it also serves as a quality control
assessment at the same time,
but I love that feeling
of the biofilm resisting my pull.
(laughter)
♪ (exciting music) ♪
So yeah, we really look at this
as a long game
and we're at the very beginning
of it right now
but I suspect it may take 10 years,
maybe 20 years,
for natto to become known enough
for people to recognize it
as a thing, as a food.
(chuckles)
It'll take a while and a lot of education,
and exposure like this,
to just spread the word.
♪ (gentle music) ♪
Our logo... many people
comment on our logo.
It's actually a mathematical function,
it's a Fermat's spiral
or a parabolical spiral,
and I love it because at the center of it
it kind of look like a ying-yang symbol,
and to me it represents
the two ingredients in our food,
the soybean and the probiotic bacteria,
that are coming together and synergizing
and making something better,
bigger, more beautiful
than the two components alone.
♪ (outro music) ♪
Subtitles by Jenny Lam-Chowdhury
www.eatingwithmyfivesenses.com