Sorry, Natto is sold-out!
It seems like the TV program “Aru-Aru” on FujiTV aired last week (January 4th) claiming that Natto helps people lose weight faster, caused a surge in demand, ending in a national Natto shortage!
After the broadcast, sales of natto rocketed, especially among young women. Takano Foods, a company based in Omitama, Ibaraki Prefecture, and Mizkan, located in Handa, Aichi Prefecture, subsequently took out newspaper ads apologizing for their lack of stock.
Natto are the famous, or should I say infamous, fermented soybeans that stink like no other food. It is rumored to be healthy, but to the point to make you lose weight in two weeks, that’s a little bit exaggerated I guess!
One can learn three things from this story:
1. Media in Japan have a huge impact on the public opinion.
2. Japan is the land of fads, that disappear as soon as they surge.
3. If you are desperate to lose weight, try out Natto, it may work! If you stand its smell, that is!
(Maincihi)
Perhaps the way it works is you just put an open container of natto near you and the smell keeps you nauseous so you don’t want any food?
OR maybe you have a spoonful of natto after dinner and it makes you “purge” what you’ve just eaten?
They really ought to put a warning on that stuff, “Not to be taken internally”.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:41 amOh my god I LOVE natto. I think its a great diet food because it tastes so damn good you can just eat that all day long. (Great way to loose weight).
One one complaint about natto even though it smells and looks sickly is that they only sell it in one size! What the hell is that about? Damn it people come on… What about KING Size?? Even a medium size??
January 16th, 2007 at 2:01 amYup. My Japanese mother-in-law is constantly trying to foist the latest “good-for-you” food product on me. Some of it’s ok–blueberries–good for eyesight!
But no matter how yummy, for instance, kinako* is–I don’t need a 2Kg bag of it!
(*that slightly sweet soy bean powder that gets sprinkled on top of o-hagi and other Japanese sweets.)
Just recently she heard tomatoes are G-F-Y. Wow! Huge bag. At least it wasn’t pickled garlic or ao-jiru or black vinegar drink or kanten (agar-agar) or pickled myoga (blech) or….well, you get the picture.
January 16th, 2007 at 3:12 amNatto ranks up there for me with durian anything (worse: durian ice cream - the only flavour in the local 189-flavour ice cream store that is sealed up in the display case - probably so other customers don’t run the hell awaaaaay from the smell), vegemite, marmite and molasses.
All nausea-inducing for me. Though, I guess they can qualify as ‘appetite suppressants’. God knows I’d have to be pretty well near starvation to resort to those.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:13 amI just think it’s an amazing age to live in. After all these hundreds of years of ignorance, of not realising what food is good for us, bad for us, good for slimming, now we have Japanese tv experts who tell us each week what their latest discovery is.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:58 amDoes anyone have a link to the original story/report? I heard they had suggested natto recipes which I would love to try.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:34 amVegemite is awesome. Durian and Natto both smell like utter crap, but don’t taste tooooooooo bad.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:04 amOh god…why did we have to bring durian into this? Natto is a sweet and refreshing treat compared to durian. That stuff is VILE.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:21 amOk now I need to know what the hell Durian is! Anyone?? What is it ?
January 16th, 2007 at 11:45 amSome claim it’s a fruit (of course, some claim McDonald’s serves hamburgers — there’s no end to self-delusion among humans)
January 16th, 2007 at 12:37 pmNo Durians Allowed!
January 16th, 2007 at 12:44 pmthat’s gold JP. pure gold.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:11 pmfeitclub, here are some durian recipes:
http://sisil.net/durian/recipes.html
Do tell us - from (very a-)far how they worked out for you.
January 16th, 2007 at 2:33 pmand for Alex: Natto recipes!
http://www.gaia21.net/natto/recipe.htm
I particularly like the suggestion of how to get rid of the ammonia smell of it.
Why you’d want to do that is a bit beyond me, though. How *else* are you suppose to know how disgusting it is if even God saw fit to ward humans away from the vileness of Natto by giving it that stench?
January 16th, 2007 at 2:38 pmWant a warm-me-up for a cold winter day?
Drop a pack of natto with all of the fixings into a cup and mix vigorously.
Pour in a pack of powdered soup. (I like mushroom soup myself.)
Add boiling water.
Stir and then eat.
Instant bean soup at its finest!
January 16th, 2007 at 2:46 pmNatto is also good mixed with some cottage cheese and then spread on toast.
January 16th, 2007 at 2:47 pm[...] JAPAN - Natto shortage “It seems like the TV program “Aru-Aru” on FujiTV aired last week (January 4th) claiming that Natto helps people lose weigh faster, caused a surge in demand, ending in a national Natto shortage.” by myrick @ 12:24 pm. Filed under Uncategorized [link] [...]
January 16th, 2007 at 4:24 pmBrown some good ground beef along with some minced onions and cut okra. Throw in a bit of shoyu and pepper. Drain. Take it off the heat then dump in some natto, in any proportion you like. (I like half & half.) Eat on hot rice, paired with a very cold beer. Yuuummmmy.
Natto gyoza are good too, but you have to deep fry them. Doesn’t work the regular way.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:27 pmIt would have never occurred to me to mix natto with beef, for some reason. But now that you mention it. . .
January 16th, 2007 at 4:58 pmNatto pasta
Mix the natto fixings together, throw it on top of a pile of pasta, and garnish with some shredded nori (seaweed).
You can splash on soy sauce to taste, if desired.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:59 pmLosing weight–Ever heard of exercise?
January 16th, 2007 at 5:04 pmAnd let’s not forget the natto hot dog of a few years back.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:04 pmI love Natto Maki! Although I have not been able to find it anywhere in North America, when I’m in Japan I scarf it down. Its the perfect Shinkansen snack…
(Ahh hell now I REALLY want Natto! Damn it people!)
January 16th, 2007 at 11:18 pm[...] The above is the natto section of a big supermarket. The display area devoted to natto is about 15 to 20 feet long and five shelves high, and is normally filled with natto. But as you can see, the shelves were picked bare today. The sign in the middle of the display has a note explaining that there is a natto shortage due to the TV show that Kaishin reported on the other day. [...]
January 18th, 2007 at 12:02 pmWhere I used to live (south London), completely bullshit-sounding stories were always questioned with a disbelieving “Naaaah. Where’d you ‘ear that?!” which would be answered with “Man in the pub said.”
The Japanese equivalent seems to be “Completely unqualified bloke on telly said.”
I simply cannot believe that a single one of the people who contributed to clearing the supermarket shelves of natto stopped for a single moment to wonder why it’s only this week, after natto’s been around for hundreds(?) of years, that the slimming properties of natto were discovered.
And yet that seems to be the case.
Gullible? They’ve taken that word out of the dictionary, you know.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:32 pmbut isn’t the taste for Natto divided along east/west japan Lines?? - (similar to my eternal question )..why does Eastern Japan (Tokyo,Yokohama..etc) operate on 50cycle/herz voltage??..and Western Japan (Nagoya,Osaka..etc) operate on 60 cycle/herz voltage.
http://www.furniture-rental-tokyo.com/english/useful_info/appliance1.html
Maybe the taste runs with voltage!
Alex - I invite comment.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:57 pmsometimes overoften we are on opposite ends of the potting shed - but then - that’s free speech…
January 18th, 2007 at 4:10 pmI spent my first seven years in Japan in Kyushu, during a time when the Shinkansen only went as far as Osaka. In those days, there was virtually no natto in Kyushu. I never saw it sold, served, or eaten, or even heard the term mentioned the whole time I was down there.
The first time I ever heard the word natto was after I moved up to Tokyo. It was one of those conversations in which I was asked if I like Japanese food, to which I replied, “I like everything,” which was followed by my Japanese companions going through a list of different dishes they heard that no gaijin in the world can stomach. When they got to natto, I told them I had never heard of it, which was satisfaction enough for the people I was with that they were, indeed, as special as they had suspected all along.
I hear now, however, with modern transportation and all of that, natto has spread pretty much across the Land of Wa. Kyushu-jin to the core Mrs. JP, however, still turns her nose up at it.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:11 pmIf it helps people lost weight, it will become popular in Taiwan next week. Look out, Taiwan!
January 18th, 2007 at 7:38 pmAlex - for natto, try Fujiya (in Vancouver). They do mail order and they have a pretty big selection of foods that they’re more than happy to ship to you for a price.
http://www.fujiya.ca/vancouver_fujiya.cfm
I dropped by the local Japanese market that caters heavily to the local Japanese ESL students yesterday. The clerk looked stunned, then gave me a cat-butt face, when I asked her about the product. I don’t know if she was just really surprised that someone would even ask about it or she was recalling her last culinary encounter with it… .
There’s another mail-order place (http://www.ynest.com/nattoeng.htm) that gives information on how to make natto yourself and provides recipes. I think the webmaster also sells the bacteria that starts the fermentation.
I have no idea how hard it would be to get in the East.
January 19th, 2007 at 12:31 amSpeaking of durian fruit - smell-less stuff is here? I particularly like this quote: “To anyone who doesn’t like durian it smells like a bunch of dead cats,” said Bob Halliday, a food writer in based Bangkok. “But as you get to appreciate durian, the smell is not offensive at all. It’s attractive. It makes you drool like a mastiff.”
The whole article about how a Thai scientist managed to cross-breed 90 varieties of the fruit to produce a stinkless specimen (or at least a variety that has a smell as mild as a banana’s).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/world/asia/08durian.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all - you may be required to log-in, though.
April 9th, 2007 at 8:14 am