Nattō (soybeans fermented with Bacillus subtilis)
Nattō (soja fermentada con Bacillus subtilis)
- Date
- c. 1060 (primera mención); origen anterior · confidence low
- Place
- Tōhoku region, Japan
- Credited to
- Farmers of northern Japan; the bacillus was identified by Sawamura Kintarō (1905)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Cooked soybeans fermented by Bacillus subtilis var. natto, with a sticky texture and rich in vitamin K2 and nattokinase. It is one of the great bacterial fermentations of Asian cuisine, alongside similar soybean foods of Korea and the Himalaya.
The origin is legendary (tales of Minamoto no Yoshiie's campaign) and no firm date exists; the approximate date of the first written mentions is used, with strong uncertainty. Similar foods (kinema, thua nao, cheonggukjang) may have arisen independently.
What it led to
- identification of the natto bacillus by Sawamura at the University of Tokyo (1905)
- study of nattokinase (Sumi, 1987) as a fibrinolytic enzyme
- industrial starter cultures of natto and mass consumption in Japan