♪ (gentle music) ♪

["All good food has a story."]

<i>(Ann Yonetani) It's true that natto
has this very unique gooey, sticky texture</i>

but to me that's fun!

You know, it's interesting.
(laughter)

<i>It's something to talk about.</i>

Natto truly is the Japanese cheese.

It's a vegan version or a really complex, 
umami-rich, like washed rind cheese.

<i>And yeah, many cheese lovers 
really enjoy natto</i>

<i>and see that parallel in flavor profile.</i>

<i>It's a food that I feel 
like more people needs to have access to</i>

because I think that 
can benefit a lot of people

by incorporating it into their diets.

<i>Hi, my name is Ann Yonetani,
I'm the founder and owner of NYrture Food</i>

<i>which makes natto in Brooklyn, New York.</i>

<i>Natto is really a ubiquitous food,</i>

<i>an everyday food that's most commonly
eaten for breakfast.</i>

<i>Yes, I feel like I have sort of taken on
the mission of being a cheerleader,</i>

<i>a spokesperson, an evangelist
for natto in America.</i>

<i>And it really is because I truly believe
that natto is so special, so unique...</i>

I think if there's any food on Earth
that deserves to be called a <i>superfood</i>

is natto.

♪ (slow piano music) ♪

It's good.

<i>In a weird way, I'm an urban farmer,
an urban micro farmer.</i>

<i>I grow bacteria, 
and those bacteria eat soybeans,</i>

<i>and they help me produce natto.</i>

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.

Our first products--

So those little white dots
are actually chemically-pure umami taste.

<i> There is written documentation
describing natto for over a 1000 years.</i>

<i>In the West, and in America,
is virtually unknown.</i>

<i>It makes me think that if more adults</i>
<i>will come to natto with just an open mind,</i>

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 dump out the water.

And then, they sit in the water overnight,

so that the beans are able to hydrate.

<i>They will swell to over twice
the weight and volume.</i>

<i>When I first learned how to make natto</i>

<i>from a fifth-generation-natto-maker 
in Tokio--</i>

he told me that the most important step
was to choose the best beans to start with

and he was right.

The best natto soybeans in America
are grown in 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,

<i>and the bulk for that, also,
from North Dakota, specifically.</i>