Having the slime of their lives

Below is my piece in this morning's paper about the ongoing natto boom.

For the record, I like natto quite a lot.

It's smelly, slimy and Japan can't get enough

Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo

It smells like a mixture of overripe Gorgonzola and putrefying hazelnuts. Its texture is that of slugs stuffed with mozzarella. It is natto, or rotten soybeans, and it is one of the world’s most challenging foods, as loved and loathed in Japan as black puddings are in Britain or rotten herrings in Sweden. And in the past few days it has become a cult, as natto-mania has swept Japan, emptying supermarket shelves and leaving soybean fermenters scrambling to catch up with the unprecedented surge in demand.

After a television programme recommended it as a dieting aid, demand has tripled as chubby Japanese have overcome their aversion to the smelly snack. So extreme is the craze that even natto manufacturers are warning consumers not to jeopardise their health in their all-consuming desire for rotten beans.

Natto companies have been flooded with complaints from established natto aficionados, and have gone as far as to take out newspaper advertisements apologising to them for the natto famine. “If this boom turns into a reminder of the virtues of traditional Japanese food, all well and good,” says Noriyuki Ogata of the Japan Fermented Soybean Federated Co-operative Society.  “But we must emphasise that natto is not a medicine. If you want to lose weight, you need a well-balanced diet and a proper amount of exercise.”

Natto has been eaten since Japanese prehistory and is produced over the course of a week by soaking, steaming, fermenting and cooling soy beans, and combining them with salt, sugar, yeast and bacteria. At 50 yen (21 pence) a packet, it is one of the cheapest items in any supermarket, and can be consumed in any number of ways.

It is often eaten for breakfast on top of a bowl of rice, but it is also used to make sushi or omelettes, or served with noodles or spaghetti. It can be mixed with soy sauce, mustard, vinegar or egg, and is even sold as a flavour of ice cream. The barrier for many people is the cheesy smell and, even more off-putting, the texture.

When prodded with chopsticks, the slimy goo coating the soybeans forms web-like strings. The flavour is nutty and surprisingly mild. But it is natto’s reputation as a health food which is driving the current fermented bean boom.

Natto is credited with alleviating everything from thrombosis, osteoporosis and high cholesterol to dysentery, cancer and baldness, although few of these benefits are scientifically established. Earlier this month, a television programme entitled ‘Revealed! Encyclopaedia of Living’ recommended two portions of natto a day as a way of losing weight in just two weeks. By the following lunchtime, natto was sold out nationwide.

‘Revealed! Encyclopaedia of Living’ has stoked health food booms before, including fads for cocoa beans, bananas, red wine, black soybeans and blueberries. But none has been so huge or unlikely as natto-mania. “We had three times as many orders as usual, and we still haven’t been able to meet them,” a spokesman for the Mizkan food company said. “To my knowledge, there has never been an occasion before when all the shelves have been emptied.”

Comments

[Jun Okumura]

Mr. Parry, I didn't know that slugs stuffed with gorgonzola had the texture of natto. How were they? And how did you manage to stuff those slimy creatures?

[Richard Lloyd Parry]

Slugs stuffed with MOZZARELLA, not Gorgonzola! They wriggle a lot, of course, while they're being stuffed. The alternative is just to set them loose on a pizza, and let them stuff themselves.

[Mr.sonny ogbonnaya]

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Dear Sir/ madam
We approach you with solid business proposal and to extablish a
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our supplier.

We feel free to introduce our selves to you as importer of all kind
of germant and food parckages and Tomato paste in Togo
W/Africa,
And this company was incorporated in 1988 in importing same in
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scene in importation of goods in African Unity. This company had
been importing clothes / food parckges and tomato from ASIA-
EUROPE-AMERICA.

Therefore,this company had being developing after a decade of
importation of same from many companies and we are striving our
next trimendous to meet our goal in next decades,And the Ecowas trading
commttee has awarded our company thereby we have eaned OMENMA,

Obviously;We hereby to corporate and to condenscend with your company
becuase we sure enough that your company will supply our needs in
importing food parckages and tomato or all kinds of garment/textiles.

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ready in your stock wharehouse, which we are interested in to buy:
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Pants,Skirt,Skirt Jeans,Trouser ,Men's Shoes,Ladies Shoes ,Trouser
Jeans,Men'T shirt,Men's Shirt-Longleeve,Shortleeve/Textiles/leather
textiles/
TOMATO-TOMATOPASTE-ALL KINDS OF WINE-SYDEN IN ALL KINDS AND
SPEGHETTI-BOTTER-POUNDER MILK-.
Please feel free to contact us for immediate shipment.

Therefore,We need you to give us information about your ready goods and
when you can ship the goods and your terms of payment.

Thanks for anticipating co-operation.
Best regards
Mr.sonny ogbonnaya
Ste.SANROK INTERNATIONAL TRADING CO
152 Blvd notre dame des apotres
BP.4455
Lome-Togo