♪ (gentle music) ♪
["All good food has a story."]
(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 or 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 needs 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 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)
So, 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, that's how I got into this business,
just by being fascinated by the power of the microbial world.
So, 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.