Homemade Natto

Natto is arguably the healthiest food in existence due to its uniquely high amounts of K2 (good for bones) and nattokinase (good for cardiovacular health), its complete protein status (including decent leucine), its gut-healthy microbes, and its isoflavones.

Natto is also one of my very favorite foods, up there with geoduck and oysters. I think it’s best with soy sauce.

Did you know it’s relatively easy to make natto at home? Peony has been doing it. I’m so proud! The version below was made using bigger soybeans than most Japanese natto. Delicious!

She also made chickpea natto! I haven’t tried it yet. Note that chickpea natto does not have nearly as much K2 or isoflavones, and its protein quality is inferior (though not bad for a plant protein).

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I’m a hard no for neba neba foods like natto, Japanese mountain yams and okra! Lol but still it’s pretty cool that you are making your own!

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Too bad! I like all those slimy foods.

Here’s chickpea natto. A first for me. Glad to try it, but soybean is better.

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Incomplete proteins are fine so long as you eat enough variety in the course of the day to complete them (i.e. Diet for a Small Planet got it wrong).

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Probably true for most circumstances, but probably not always true. A counterexample is mTOR signaling for anabolic metabolism, which is a strong function of transient leucine intake.

Having worked many years on the mTOR pathway(s) from a drug discovery perspective in different therapeutic areas which obviously requires to take continuously a very holistic look on that pathway and many related one and all I can say is that your view is an extremely simplistic one which is based on a few papers that don’t have a terribly deep understanding of the whole biology

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I think Dr. Layman understands the biology.

Frontiers | Impacts of protein quantity and distribution on body composition

“Clinical studies demonstrated that older adults (>60 years) require meals with at least 2.8 g of leucine (~30 g of protein) to stimulate MPS [muscle protein synthesis].”

“Still, there are some fundamental metabolic responses that support meal distribution. The first is the discovery of the meal threshold for leucine to trigger MPS and the related discovery of the duration of the post-meal anabolic response. Triggering the mTOR signal complex to initiate MPS [in >60 adults] requires approximately 3.0 g of leucine, which is equivalent to a meal containing approximately 30–35 g of high-quality protein, and once activated, MPS will remain elevated for approximately 2.5 h.”

Actually he might understand how to game the system to get grants but doesn’t understand clinical trials - I haven’t read the whole paper put just looking over it briefly I see a lot of studies with 35, 60 or 130 people involved (including placebo group) which is a laughable small number of people for such kind of studies to draw any scientifically valid conclusions. He is working in academy so his main goal is to secure the next grant (which is understandable) and to be able to do so he is using very small patient numbers which are statistically not powered enough to draw any conclusions - also known as grant tea leaf reading.
In small patient numbers you will easily find some correlation which will disappear once you use real clinical studies. There is a reason why the biotech industry is required to use large patient numbers for Ph3 studies - it’s all about statistics. There is also a reason biotech/pharma isn’t running “food-related” clinical studies (and it’s not IP reasons) but once you run large studies all those “special” components of food which show a “special” correlation with some pathway/health outcome disappear. Dr. Layman should run the same studies with 5000+ people and we will see if he finds the same results (I very much doubt it)

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Why should one bring counter evidence on something which is based on no scientific evidence which would be valid for any approval by FDA or EMA. Just because something is published in a journal doesn’t automatically mean it has been done under scientific rigor - unfortunately academic science often works towards finding some hints on something from either studies in animal (which are often questionable towards translation to humans) or humans (which as mentioned before are run completely underpowered in academic scenarios). Your logic is the wrong way around - I bring you counter evidence once you present me data which is based on scientific rigor and not only on finding unproven correlations.

That is way too oversimplified - human biology is way more complex. There is, for example a reason, why academic labs often find in oncology settings the “next big” correlation and determine that a specific target will “beat” a certain cancer. Once the industry finds inhibitors and tests them in clinic they fail or have much less impact on patients than expected because human biology is way more complex than those initial academic findings let you believe.
The same issue is with any of these academic findings around food or metabolism that you are trying to reference. The world of genetics (and to some extend the ease of running rodent studies) have helped to get a certain level of deeper understanding of mechanism but it (unfortunately) gave academics easy tools to try to find endless correlations (but not the tools and money to prove causation - everybody can (and is) run GWAS analysis and comes up with those papers

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Please - no ChatGPT on science related issues - we have tried to use it in company settings (within drug discovery settings) and it fails miserable as it makes up things, doesn’t have relevant data etc. If ChatGPT is your main argument on anything beyond basic science (and even there we have seen huge mistakes) you have already lost that argument

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No AI slop, please.

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More natto! I’m addicted.

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