Founded at the end of the Edo period, 180 years ago
Let's start with an introduction to Miharaya Co., Ltd. and Mr. Kawahara.
Miharaya was founded in 1848, at the end of the Edo period. Originally a rice merchant, he made miso and soy sauce as a side job.
In 15, the company closed down its rice trading business and turned its main business into producing miso and soy sauce.
Currently, in addition to miso and soy sauce, we also sell fermented foods such as dashi soup, mentsuyu, soy sauce bean koji, miso pickles, and soy sauce beans.
Although we are a small miso shop with only 5 employees, we have inherited the techniques from the time of our founding, and continue to provide the world with carefully selected products backed by tradition, such as using only rice and soybeans produced within the prefecture.
Get a job and immerse yourself in the world of microorganisms
Mr. Kawahara was born in 38 as the eldest son of a traditional miso shop, but when he was young, he didn't really think about taking over the family business.
This was because he felt that the traditional miso production process was becoming modernized and industrialized, led by major miso manufacturers, and that small breweries were gradually becoming obsolete and would be weeded out.
After graduating from high school, I entered Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Engineering with the aim of becoming an engineer, where I mainly studied petrochemistry. Furthermore, I majored in biochemistry in graduate school and got a job at a pharmaceutical company that deals with microorganisms.
At the company's research institute, I worked on basic research such as using microorganisms to produce amino acids for feed from methanol, and using microorganisms to culture and purify anticancer drugs.
"At that time, as an engineer, I would go to the office even on my days off, immersing myself in the world of microorganisms from morning until night."
After that, I was seconded to a food-related subsidiary to sell lactic acid bacteria starters, and after returning to the head office, I was involved in the development of enteral nutrients and intestinal cleansing agents used in endoscopy. Ta.
While meeting medical professionals, Kawahara was taken aback by a casual comment from a doctor.
Stay healthy with gifts from your family
In the early 1990s, when Mr. Kawahara was involved in development, there were two types of enteral nutritional supplements: component nutrients that could be absorbed directly from the gastrointestinal tract, and liquid foods that needed to be digested.
There are several ways to administer nutritional supplements: by putting them directly into the stomach, through the nose (nasally), and through the mouth (orally), but the most natural method is through the mouth.
One day, a doctor in charge of critical care medicine tweeted the following while being enthusiastically given advice on product development.
``It seems like the patients are getting better after eating the gifts from their families and are leaving the hospital.''
Why is it better to eat by mouth? Why do people feel better with home-cooked meals rather than hospital meals, which are supposed to be hygienic and nutritionally well-calculated?
My research spirit was tickled.
Difference between processed food and home cooking
If you continue to receive intravenous nutrition through a drip, your immune system will weaken and you will be more susceptible to infections.
Kawahara also thought that humans, who have evolved to take food orally, may be able to maintain their immune function by eating orally.
Another thing that caught my attention was the difference between processed foods and homemade foods.
Processed foods, which maintain the same quality no matter where you buy them, are manufactured under strict sanitary controls, as exemplified by a method called HACCP, which was developed in the United States to ensure the safety of space food. It is a closed system that eliminates the influence of the surrounding environment.
On the other hand, homemade food is an open system that is commonly produced in open home kitchens.
Although home-cooked meals may not be as hygienic as processed foods, Kawahara says, ``It's only in the past 30 years that we've started eating foods made in closed systems on a daily basis. "We have evolved by eating homemade food made using open systems," he emphasizes.
This is a unique perspective from Mr. Kawahara, who considers himself a ``chemist,'' but it is not just a change in thinking, but also the result of Mr. Kawahara's unique sense of smell, who was born in a miso shop and devoted himself to microbial research. It seems like yes.
Kawahara emphasizes that ``The fact that food, which until now was connected to the environment, has now become a product that is not connected to the environment is a major incident since the beginning of humankind,'' because this has brought about various negative effects.
Microorganisms were the key to this.
