A history of more than 80 years, made up of scientific research and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle. Yakult will be present at the Festival of Food Journalism, with its own corner, having been actively working with communication professionals for some years to encourage greater awareness on the part of the population of the information on nutrition.
It is in the 1930 that at the University of Kyoto in Japan, the doctor and microbiologist of the Minoru Shirota Faculty of Medicine selects and cultivates a particular lactic ferment, so strong as to resist gastric juices and reach the intestine alive, thus favoring balance of intestinal flora. This ferment is called Lactobacillus casei Shirota (LcS), in his honor. In 1955, Yakult Honsha Co. Ltd. is founded in Tokyo, the current global leader; from the 1964 the Group progressively develops its activity abroad to land, in 1994, in the European market and, in 2007, in Italy.
The story of Yakult has never stopped feeding on scientific research, with a particular focus on the field of probiotics. The company has a Research & Development division and two major cutting-edge centers: the Central Microbiological Research Institute in Tokyo and the European Research Center in Ghent in Belgium. In Italy, Yakult carries out various activities in the scientific field including clinical and basic research, collaborations with the main scientific societies, participation in congresses and organization of medical refresher courses.
There is also no lack of educational activities aimed at the population, such as campaigns carried out in collaboration with scientific societies and institutions. Yakult, since 2009, has been a partner of the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, with various educational activities in the iLab Alimentation, to experiment and deepen the knowledge of lactic ferments and the importance of the intestinal microbiota together with students and families. Thanks to the historic partnership, Yakult has recently developed the new interactive #ciboinfermento laboratory, to shed light on the topic of food fermentation, from technological to historical-geographical aspects, with a scientific and cultural slant.
