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(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.
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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.
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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,
called nattokinase,
and this enzyme is a natural blood thinner.
It has an enzymatic activity which, actually, has been shown
to be able 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,
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 require [inaudible] of a week or so.
Many Japanese people have told me that our natto
is the most delicious natto 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.
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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 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--
The more resistance I have from those strings,
the better I know the fermentation is, the better the natto,
so it serves as quality control assessment at the same time,
but I love that feeling of the biofilm resisting my pull.
(laughter)
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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...
It'll take a while, and a lot of education and exposure like this,
to just spread the word.
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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 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.
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English subtitles by Jenny Lam-Chowdhury