Yakult, a company that made health care its raison d'être

October 27, 2026
Author: Juan Manuel Palomares Cantero
Versión en español

What can a small bottle of Yakult teach us about ethics and bioethics?

Surely we have seen it hundreds of times, perhaps at family breakfast. Behind this everyday product is a story that began almost a hundred years ago, with a Japanese doctor's concern for people's health.

Minoru Shirota believed that science could do more than treat diseases: it could also help prevent them. His work led to an international company whose philosophy emphasizes research, prevention, and accessibility. This article examines Yakult as a case of business practices that can be evaluated positively from a bioethical perspective. It does not seek to recommend a brand or judge a product's clinical efficacy, but to ask what its origin, institutional commitments, and documented experiences teach us about companies' responsibility to human health.

A company that started with people in mind

In the first decades of the twentieth century, intestinal infectious diseases represented a major health problem in Japan. Shirota researched microorganisms that could contribute to health and, in 1930, cultivated a bacterial strain that would later bear her name. Yakult began to be marketed in 1935 (Yakult Mexico).

Its philosophy, known as Shirotaism, is based on three convictions: preventive medicine, gut health care, and affordable products. There is a difference between asking what we can sell and asking what human need we can serve. Both questions are legitimate, but the second reveals an ethical concern from the beginning.

This is where we find human dignity. People are worth themselves, before they are consumers, workers or recipients of services. When a human need guides the business purpose, its value is not measured only by profitability.

Yakult's Code of Ethics includes respect for human rights, non-discrimination, and dignified treatment of workers (Yakult Honsha Co., Ltd.). These are relevant commitments to evaluate its performance: ethical culture is recognized in ordinary decisions, not just in written statements (Roy et al., 2024).

Taking care of life before the disease appears

We tend to think about health when something starts to go wrong and we change our habits after receiving a diagnosis. Shirota understood that care had to start earlier.

Their commitment to prevention is related to respect for physical life. Our body is not alien to our identity: through it we live, work, love, and carry out our projects. Caring for it is a personal responsibility and, at the same time, a shared concern.

Preventive medicine does not promise to eliminate all diseases, but it helps to recognize possibilities to protect health. Yakult incorporated this concern into its identity: its mission links research with healthy lifestyles and its vision gives an express place to prevention (Yakult Mexico). A medical intuition ultimately guided the raison d'être of a company.

Health and the possibility of reaching more people

Another conviction of Shirotaism deserves special attention: to offer economically accessible products. A scientific discovery can be extraordinary, but its social reach also depends on who can access its results.

This is where justice comes in. Opportunities to care for one's health depend on each person's resources and circumstances. The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights recognizes social responsibility for health and the importance of adequate nutrition (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2005).

A food company is not a substitute for government obligations, but it can contribute through decisions about its products, prices, and distribution. Shirota's aspiration was to bring his research results to a wide audience. Accessibility was not a secondary detail: it was part of his way of understanding the purpose of what he had discovered.

This concern brings us closer to solidarity, which is not reduced to making donations. It can also be seen in a company's daily activities.

A concrete example is the Yakult Ladies. This system of home distribution, initiated in Japan in 1963, opened up job opportunities for women. Recent research examines the conditions of continuity of this work (Han et al., 2025).

A BBC News Mundo report documents another dimension of these visits: some delivery women maintain frequent contact with elderly people who live alone (BBC News Mundo, 2026). Giving can thus become an occasion for encounter. Solidarity appears in something as simple as meeting and listening to another person.

A drink does not solve loneliness, but a conversation can relieve it for a moment. The visit retains its commercial character; for this reason, it is interesting that it also opens space for human relationships.

When everyone contributes from what they know how to do

Health care needs doctors, researchers, families, authorities and companies. Each one has different possibilities and responsibilities. This idea leads us to subsidiarity: recognizing the value of the initiative of people and organizations, without substituting what corresponds to others.

Yakult develops research and food production activities, in addition to disseminating information on intestinal health. His case allows us to appreciate a social contribution from his own field of competence, without replacing health institutions.

This principle avoids another frequent confusion: thinking that social responsibility requires companies to become hospitals, schools or care institutions. Their contribution can be in researching seriously, providing job opportunities and offering quality goods. The decisive thing is not to invade the responsibilities of others, but to assume one's own with awareness of their human consequences.

Science as a way of caring

Shirota was not satisfied with observing a health problem: she wanted to understand it and find an answer. That decision reflects two classic principles of bioethics, beneficence and nonmaleficence: seeking the good and avoiding unjustified harm.

Although we usually associate them with doctors and researchers, they also matter to those who make health-related products. Research, taking care of quality and communicating rigorously are part of the same responsibility.

Studies on fermented foods show interesting results, but their effects should be assessed according to the product and the people studied (Sampsell et al., 2025). In the case of probiotics, the characteristics of each strain and the available evidence are important (Marco et al., 2026).

The importance that Yakult attaches to science offers a criterion of evaluation here: research means checking, learning and recognizing what is missing to be known. When a company is linked to health, distinguishing between preventive purpose and demonstrated effects also expresses respect for people.

Respect who decides

Few decisions are as personal as those related to our health. We all have different circumstances, values, and experiences. Autonomy recognizes our ability to choose, and in medicine, it finds an especially important expression in informed consent (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979).

In a commercial relationship, we are not talking about clinical consent, but we are talking about the right to receive clear and truthful information. Whoever buys a health-related food needs to understand what they are consuming and what they can reasonably expect.

Trust in a brand should not replace personal judgment, but rather support it. Yakult's emphasis on research also allows us to value the importance of clearly communicating what we know, without confusing health information with advertising.

When business success also has a human meaning

What makes a company truly valuable? It needs to generate profits to sustain jobs, develop products and invest in research. But we can also appreciate the needs it serves, the treatment it offers people and its contribution to society.

Here we find the common good. Contemporary reflection on the purpose of companies invites us to look beyond immediate economic interest (Claassen, 2026). From a humanist perspective, the common good includes the conditions that allow us to live with dignity and participate in social life.

The case of Yakult allows us to recognize elements of bioethical responsibility in a preventive philosophy and in documented practices such as the work of the Yakult Ladies. This recognition does not constitute a certification of all its operations: it requires distinguishing between declared purposes, verified experiences and results that would require other research.

Perhaps that is why a small bottle can teach us something about ethics. The most interesting question is not whether we should buy it, but how a business activity can incorporate caring for people among the reasons that guide its decisions.

Declaration of interests

The author declares that he does not maintain employment, commercial, consulting, sponsorship or financing relations with Yakult, nor has any interests that have conditioned the content of this article.

References

• BBC News Mundo. (2026, 30 de marzo). The yogurt delivery women who fight loneliness in Japan, one of the oldest countries in the world. THE NATION. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/el-mundo/las-repartidoras-de-yogur-que-combaten-la-soledad-en-japon-uno-de-los-paises-mas-envejecidos-del-nid30032026/ 
• Claassen, R. (2026). Corporate purpose and democratic theory: A governance trilemma. Journal of Business Ethics, 205, 159–175. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-025-06127-1 
• Han, C., Nagira, M., Kohara, A., Mitani, R., Ota, H., & Sekine, K. (2025). An analysis of factors influencing the sustainable workstyle of Yakult Ladies: A study of three companies in the Yakult Group in Japan. Asian Journal of Human Services, 28, 300–313. https://doi.org/10.14391/ajhs.28.300 
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• Yakult Honsha Co., Ltd. (s. f.). Yakult ethical principles & code of conduct. https://www.yakult.co.jp/english/company/ethics.html 
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Juan Manuel Palomares Cantero has a degree in Law, a master's degree and a PhD in Bioethics from the Universidad Anáhuac México. He has been director of Human Capital, as well as director and general coordinator in the Faculty of Bioethics. He currently works as a researcher in the Academic Directorate of Integral Training of the same university, where he promotes projects on professional ethics, open reason and comprehensive training. He is a member of the Mexican National Academy of Bioethics, the Latin American and Caribbean Federation of Bioethics Institutions (FELAIBE) and the National System of Researchers. 

This article was assisted in its writing by the use of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence tool developed by OpenAI.
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