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