Posted on 10/07/2016 4:33:15 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Natto has a pretty bad reputation for its taste and texture, but there’s no denying the health benefits of this fermented soy food.
4 Health Benefits of Natto
Natto is a traditional Japanese dish made from fermented soybeans. It has many of the benefits you’d get from eating other fermented foods, like sauerkraut or miso. The good bacteria in these foods promote gut health and offer many other health benefits.
Natto gets special attention when it comes to health benefits because of its particular mix of enzymes and vitamins. Below are four studies highlighting some of natto’s unique properties.
1. It could hold a key to treating celiac disease. One type of good bacteria in natto shows promise for helping people with celiac disease digest gluten. Don’t try eating natto on toast just yet, though. Read about how and why researchers are looking at natto to treat celiac disease.
2. It improves bone density. A 2006 study published in The Journal of Nutrition found that women who ate natto had a lower risk of osteoporosis. Other soy foods did not show the same results.
3. It increases longevity. There is evidence that two compounds in natto—the enzyme nattokinase and vitamin K2—help you live longer.
4. It promotes heart health. Nattokinase—the enzyme in natto that gives it many of its health benefits—improved blood flow in one animal study. The same study found that it inhibited “platelet aggregation,” which is a precursor to blood clots. In fact, natto is a Japanese folk remedy for heart disease.
Natto has a reputation for being…let’s say, hard to eat. And until this week, I’d never tried natto before. I didn’t feel right sharing the health benefits of a food I’d never tasted, so I visited a sushi restaurant in my neighborhood to give natto a try.
A Natto Experience I’ll be honest: I was pretty nervous about trying natto! The descriptions I’ve read about this food are pretty horrifying. It turned out not to be as bad as I feared, which I know isn’t much of a five-star review. My favorite part of the experience, though, was what my toddler said after his first bite.
Our food took longer than usual to arrive, and the server told us it was because so few people order natto.
It arrived on the plate with the inari nigiri and avocado roll we ordered. Sticky, stringy brown soybeans wrapped with green onions in rice and seaweed, then rolled in sesame seeds.
My First Time Trying Natto (and It's Curious-Tasting Health Benefits) There were sesame seeds, but they’re hard to see. I think even more would have been better. On first glance, it didn’t look as unappetizing as I thought it would, but given its rep, I was ready for my natto roll to be stomach-turning from the first bite. It actually wasn’t that bad, though I’m not sure I’ll order it again. The rice, onions and sesame seeds really masked a lot of the flavor. Doused in soy sauce, you could barely taste it.
I dissected one of the rolls to get an undiluted natto experience, and on its own it’s definitely not my favorite food. The initial taste was a little bit nutty, and it had a sharp aftertaste that I associate with other fermented foods like sauerkraut. After the sharp taste came another aftertaste that I wish I could describe with a word other than “garbagey.”
My toddler is a pretty adventurous eater and wanted to taste a bite after eating his half of our avocado roll and most of my half, too. He’s three, so he’s not familiar with the buzz about natto’s health benefits or its taste. To him, it was just another food to try. In a moment of perfect toddler honesty, told me, “Mommy, I don’t like these brown soybeans.”
If you’re going to eat natto for its health benefits, I’d suggest ordering it maki-style, like the sushi place we visited. Mixing it up with other foods seems to be the way to go. A good friend of mine genuinely loves natto, and he eats it mixed up in a bowl with rice and greens. Some sushi restaurants offer natto on its own over rice or wrapped in a hand roll. If you’re new to natto, this might be a little bit overwhelming, taste- and texture-wise.
Soy is high in estrogen and men who eat too much of it are neutering themselves.
The same can be said of Kefir , yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchee, tempeh and others....
I never tried Natto but I sure like Kombucha.
I always liked natto....
I’m not sure if I was eating Natto Beans, but I had a Japanese dinner some years ago, and a portion of it tasted exactly like boiled Rubber Bands. I’m not into Sushi either. I always like their Terriyaki Chicken or BBQ Pork though.
Good for the writer, taking her son to restaurants for a sit down dinner. They learn how to wait, and how to make a decision on what to order in a timely manner.
He won’t ever forget having a fun Japanese Dinner experience with Mom!
Natto is fermented. Whole different thing, very healthy.
I fondly remember the Iron Chef natto episode. May be healthy, but that stuff sure looked gross.
But that episode was sill better than “secret ingredient is turtle” episode. Had to cut that one right off.
+ about a million. Well said.
Unfermented soy is pretty toxic. Fermented soy is extremely good for you.
Hey, I’m a big fan of eating rotting veggies. Yum!
One hundred grams of soy protein = 500 mg of isoflavones in the form of genistein — a very high dose. That's the same amount of estrogen as a birth control pill. Thus,links to breast cancer, DNA damage and chromosome fragmentation, and feminization of males.
But none of those nasty effects are found in Japanese who eat lots of soy, because they eat nearly ALL of it in fermented form: Natto, Miso, Tempeh, fermented soy sauce (tamari), Fermented or pickled tofu. The fermentation enzymes evidently break down the bad phytochemicals in soy.
Natto is loaded with the good stuff.
But I tasted it once and thought I'd die :o/
Alas, it's undeniably one of the healthiest foods in the world. I think if you took one little natto-ized bean, and blenderized it into a big bowl of soup, maybe it could be OK.
That's my bacon-and-eggs American opinion!
I just started kefir three days ago and that’s wild enough for me.
It’s interesting that people are concerned about the estrogen in soy, but they’ll eat meat crammed with estrogen and hormones. What’s the difference?
Where the big contradiction comes in, is they're perfectly OK with birth control pills, injectable-implantable-transdermal hormonal contraceptives and other endocrine-disrupting birth control methods.
Lots of women put stuff in their bodies they wouldn't put in their compost pile.
I’m not a nutritional expert, but beware of misunderstanding the estrogen family of chemicals.
Category:Estrogens
The phytoestrogen found in plants is is not the same chemical compound as the human steroid estrogen. In fact, the phytoestrogen from eating plants helps to block the effects of estrogen.
Corrections welcome.
Oh, and.... I wanted to correct something I said in my last post.
I said the Japanese eat “lots” of fermented soy, but actually they don’t eat it in large quantities. They eat it as more of a condiment, or a (minor) ingredient in a bigger recipe.
I read somewhere that Japanese average only one ounce of fermented soy per day. And almost -zero- unfermented.
Less than that. My wife and kids like natto, but only eat it occasionally, usually with a raw egg mixed in. It’s not all a daily food. I can’t stand it though, unless it’s as a dried rice topping mixed with other spices.
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