Is That Sushi Hazardous To Your Health? 554
pdclarry writes "A recent study by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University found that a piece of tuna sushi may not be tuna at all: 'A piece of tuna sushi has the potential to be an endangered species, a fraud or a health hazard,' wrote the authors. 'All three of these cases were uncovered in this study.' The study, published in PLoS ONE examined 68 samples of tuna sushi purchased from 31 restaurants in Manhattan (New York City) and Denver, Colorado. Some of these were from endangered species, others were not as labeled, and some were not tuna at all. Of these last, five samples labeled as 'white tuna' were from a toxic fish, Escolar, which is a gempylid species banned for sale in Italy and Japan due to health concerns. 'It can cause gastrointestinal symptoms ranging from mild and rapid passage of oily yellow or orange droplets, to severe diarrhea with nausea and vomiting. The milder symptoms have been referred to as keriorrhea [i.e. flow of wax in Greek].' Fraud in sushi is not new; Slashdot also reported study on mislabeling in 2008. This new study shows that some sushi can actually make you sick. The study was also covered by Wired."
Technically... (Score:5, Informative)
If we're just talking about the tuna, then it's Sashimi [wikipedia.org].
Sushi is vinegar rice, topped with other ingredients, such as fish.
</pedantic>
META comment: PLoS ONE (Score:3, Informative)
PLoS ONE, if you didn't know, is a public-access scientific journal publishing enterprise. No more use/abuse of scientists as creator of content AND reviewers of content (who both do this for free) and then only releasing the articles for profit, for the next 100 years. I am thoroughly disgusted by this business model which takes the work of us scientists, gives nothing back and then profits from it. Fuck that.
PLoS ONE, I wish you luck. Please do crush the Natures, Sciences and Elseviers of this world. Pretty please.
Re:Technically... (Score:2, Informative)
Not counting, of course, the veggie roll... whose predominant ingredients include cucumber, carrots, rice, and other non-fish products.
And on a related aside, Fish roe is absolutely disgusting. Every time I eat sushi with fish roe it's like i'm chewing on dozens of tiny eyeballs. It's enough to make me want to gag.
Kill the toxins... (Score:1, Informative)
Endangered species? No (Score:4, Informative)
The chances that the fish you eat in sushi is an endangered species in a sushi bar is roughly the same as if you go to any other seafood restaurant. There are a lot of fish in the sea (no shit sherlock) - assume that 0.01% of fish are endangered. Now imagine dragging a net behind your boat. In theory at most 0.01% of all fish in your net will be endangered. Let's look at this more closely: Endangered fish are likely to exist in much smaller quantities, so while there might be 500 tuna per square mile of ocean, there might only be 1 of super-endangered-deliciousfish. Secondly, super-endangered-deliciousfish (SEDF) may only exist in the Bahamas, while the fisherman may be trawling off the coast of Georgia for Tuna, where Tuna are known to be abundant. Your likelyhood of catching a SEDF is highly unlikely.
In any case the fish is dumped in the boat's hold on ice, and then sorted out when they get back to port. Fish are already partially ready for consumption at this point. It's not like fisherman go out in the forest and hunt individual endangered fish with rifles where they can see them. Making most any argument about endangered fish in a commercial fishing situation is completely retarded. The only argument for this is situations where opportunistic overfishing occurs in specific areas like when salmon swim upriver to lay their eggs, and this is already highly regulated.
Also this article came out almost a year ago in the NYT this is old news(!)
Re:Technically... (Score:2, Informative)
If we're being completely pedantic, then you should read the title again.
Is That Sushi Hazardous To Your Health?
Here "that" refers to a particular piece of sushi. Reading the summary and then the article, one finds that "that sushi" refers to "sushi containing 'tuna'". Raw fish on its own is sashimi. Raw fish on rice is sushi. If the raw fish in either case is poisonous, then the entire thing will be hazardous to your health.
Or, do you somehow think that the rice is going to save you?
Re:Buyer Beware! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Possible none issue soon (Score:5, Informative)
It would be nice to see DECENT aquaculture come to fruition.
Yikes, aquaculture is hard enough to do with fresh water fish. You want to do it with salt water fish? Good luck...
It's one thing to have a salt water aquarium, at a zoo or for a hobby (read: slavery). But aquaculture involves raising fish at incredibly high densities in order to be profitable. These high densities mean that the slightest little change - in dissolved O2, pH, temperature, nitrites, ammonia, etc will kill your fish. Now you want to add salinity which not only has to be kept within limits but corrodes your pumps, pipes and valves, increasing the chances of breakdowns?
No thanks! Have fun!
PS: Fish die really really quietly, and they love to do it in large quantities. I know whereof I speak, I promise...
Never again in the US (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Colorado and New York (Score:5, Informative)
If only there were an ocean closer to New York. It would be even better if that ocean had tuna of its own. Best of all would be if the tuna there was one of the most delicious [nationalgeographic.com] varieties around, such that it was the most used tuna [wikipedia.org] for sushi/sashimi. Wow...one can dream.
Re:Escolar (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Endangered species? No (Score:4, Informative)
Not exactly true. Fish schools are specifically targeted by trawlers, found by sonar and fished out. There is not much by-catch in these nets contrary to indiscriminate trawling or using longlines or gill nets. Bluefin Tuna, for example is only found in the Mediterranean and the chance of catching a endangered species that lives in the Arctic is zero. Of course Bluefin is already endangered and there lies the crux of the problem: We generally overexploit all fish stocks and should declare large areas of the oceans at no-fishing zones to recover fish populations and become sustainable in the long run.
Re:Buyer Beware! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Technically... (Score:5, Informative)
"The title asks if the sushi is hazardous, but the story is only about the fish"
The story is not even that: is a non-story. Eating a mislabelled piece of raw fish might produce disease. Well, yeah...
Re:So technically (Score:2, Informative)
I never claimed that sashimi doesn't mean raw fish, I claimed that the word Sushi can refer to sashimi. In my culture people go to eat a "sushi restaurant" to go get "sushi" but then they order "sashimi". This would indicate that in the culture I live in sashimi is a subset of a boarder category of "sushi". Thus my point stands, when someone says the word sushi it includes the subset "sashimi." If you don't agree with this assessment please let me know your experiences that indicate that sashimi is not referred to using the broad term "sushi".
Maybe you didn't read the thread so you don't understand what I was even saying, but I never claimed that sashimi wasn't raw fish.
I eat sushi very regularly with friends and family so I do think I know what I am talking about within the average US sushi eating culture.
Skip tuna altogether? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Technically... (Score:5, Informative)
Technically, Oxford's lexicographic philosophy is more descriptivist than prescriptivist. Their stated intent is to document, record and communicate the language they find through actual usage. Thus, Oxford, while the gold standard of English lexicography (more so British usage than American, but it's pretty strong in either case) is not to be confused with an "ANSI standard." It's an entirely different thing, a better analogy might be the SIbley Guide.
Re:Technically... (Score:3, Informative)
The O.E.D. [oed.com] is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive.
Re:Technically... (Score:1, Informative)
TECHNICALLY, "sushi" covers all brands, and the type of "sushi" that is the raw fish over the rice is called nigiri sushi.
Then there's maki sushi, also commonly known as "sushi rolls", where the rice is on the outside of the ingredients (which can be fish or other tasty things).
Re:Better take the alternative (Score:3, Informative)
Much of the US beef supply comes from cows that were fed corn, which is higher in protein and produces desirable "marbling" in the steak. Unfortunately, cows can't actually digest corn and get sick, so they are also fed antibiotics. Some cows are also fed growth hormones to further reduce their time-to-market. You'll be eating some of these with your hamburger.
Worse, the cows are slaughtered in a way that allows e-coli from fecal matter to contaminate the meat, and finally ground beef is also mixed beef, which makes the source of the contamination even harder to track. The reason why you need to cook your hamburger fully is not because raw beef itself is unsafe.
In other words, the cheapest way to get beef to you is to feed cows something they can't digest, pump them full of antibiotics and hormones, and slaughter them without completely avoiding contamination. There are over six billion of us, which is numerous enough that just about everything we do has serious unintended consequences. Once we all want something, the market takes a series of steps to let us have it, and some of these steps are really bad.
Fire is good, but cold works just as well (Score:3, Informative)
From the Sushi Faq: [sushifaq.com]
The only concern any inspectors have is referred to as the parasite destruction guarantee, which is accomplished by 'freezing and storing seafood at -4F (-20C) or below for 7 days (total time), or freezing at -31F (-35C) or below until solid and storing at -31F (-35C) or below for 15 hours, or freezing at -31F (-35C) or below until solid and storing at -4F (-20C) or below for 24 hours' which is sufficient to kill parasites.
However be warned:
I have spoken with many in the seafood industry who supply ‘sushi grade’ fish for sushi and sashimi served at restaurants and they all give me the same answer they do not know of any regulations from either the FDA or any other agencies regarding 'sushi grade' seafood, which is why suppliers have set up their own micro and chemical parameters for their products.
So the FDA does say there is a level of frozen prep that will guarantee parasite death, but it isn't a requirement like USDA beef grades. [wikipedia.org]
Re:So technically (Score:1, Informative)
Again. Linguistic laziness. If you go to McDonalds, it's very common to say "I just had McDonalds." Meaning "I just went to a McDonalds restaurant." Your above statement means "I just went to a sushi establishment." If, in fact, they mean what you imply, then they are idiots. That's also a distinct possibility. But I'm very much against letting idiots define language, even if a majority of them do it. Fo Rizzeal my nizza.
Re:So technically (Score:5, Informative)
In Japan sashimi is always served in sushi restaurants. A person may say, "Let's go eat sushi" and then at the restaurant end up eating only sashimi. But at a banquet sushi is almost never served. Sashimi on the other hand is virtually always served. A person would never say, "I went to a banquet and ate sushi" meaning that they ate sashimi.
Historically, sushi is a snack food. It's kind of an all-in-one meal since the rice is included in every bite. In a way you can think of it as a sandwich. In western culture, bread was once seen as the most important part of a meal. With a sandwich, you eat the bread with the meal. But you can also eat bread separately with the meal. You can eat a roast beef sandwich, but it would be strange eat a piece of roast beef and call it a "sandwich" simply because you bought it in a sandwich shop.
I understand your point about US usage of words being different. But I think you miss a lot of the Japanese food culture by confusing the terms. There is a lot of sushi that doesn't contain sashimi. In Japan, eating in a sushi restaurant is one of the easiest ways to accommodate vegetarians since there is a large variety of vegetarian sushi. On the other hand, sushi is not actually a very important part of Japanese cuisine. Sashimi is *far* more important. I couldn't imagine eating a high class meal without having sashimi. By understanding the importance of the different kinds of food, I think you will gain a better appreciation for what is one of the world's great cuisines.
But, as always, YMMV.
Re:Buyer Beware! (Score:4, Informative)
It's not like this is a new thing, or surprising, though. People have been catching all kinds of nasty things from raw seafood, like Hep A from oysters, for a long time.
Re:Buyer Beware! (Score:3, Informative)
In many Western countries, the health authorities specify that fish served raw must be frozen first to kill certain types of parasite, so what you get in the middle of the country probably doesn't differ much from what you get on the coast.
Similar to chicken.
Storage and handling regulations mandate a range of temperatures, but the bottom of that range is below freezing, a fact you can be sure the producers are happy to take advantage of. The result is that most of the "fresh" chicken sold at your local store is really frozen, or perhaps "lightly frozen for indeterminate periods of time".
Fresh chicken, fresh fish, or fresh anything is noticeably better, and is best purchased directly, or at least earlier in the chain. When I go to my local Chinatown to get a freshly slaughtered chicken, it's not uncommon to see little old Chinese ladies carrying fish home for dinner. For some, it seems, "fresh" means "live, in a bag of water".
Re:Possible none issue soon (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So technically (Score:3, Informative)
Or anyone who uses acronyms in conversation, particularly if they actually spell them out..."I mean, I was like, O-M-G! And she was all like, T-M-I!"
Neither of those is an acronym, they are just plain old abbreviations. You don't pronounce them as words like "omg" or "tmi".
no more "toxic" than Olestra (Score:4, Informative)
The fish contains indigestible fats; as such, it has about the same effect as eating large amounts of Olestra: it's laxative and leads to oily "leakage".
"The US FDA has warned consumers about potential mislabeling of oilfish [same thing applies to Escolar], but has concluded that any laxative side effects that occur are uncomfortable at worst and pose no health risk."
Re:Technically... (Score:2, Informative)
Which is why German speakers use the anglicism "handy" for cell phones (known as mobiles in the UK).
Language. You fail it.
Re:Yuck! Sushi! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:post (Score:5, Informative)
Re:post (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So technically (Score:3, Informative)
What people are fishing (heh!) around for here is the term synecdoche, which refers to the sort of metaphor in which "a part represents the whole". Some common examples are "head" to refer to an entire creature ("head of cattle"), "hired hand" to mean a worker, and "eyes" to mean readers of a text or viewers of video material. People do this all the time, in all languages.
Two opposite example I've run across: It is well known that the English like their "tea" in the afternoon, but it seems that the majority drink coffee (to the despair of the true traditionalists ;-). The term "tea" is just what the mid-afternoon snack is called; it doesn't mean that nothing but tea is served. In the opposite direction, Finns refer to the same sort of light snack as "kahvi" (pronounced "coffee"), and often have hot water and tea available for the people who prefer that drink, plus the pastries or semi-sweet bread that are usually on the table. Both are examples of synecdoche, using the name of a locally-standard drinkable to name a certain kind of meal.
The Japanese term "sushi" is another example. As noted by others, the word refers to a variety of sticky rice that works well for the kind of food that consists of a bite-size clump of the rice, lightly seasoned with vinegar and topped or mixed with other edibles. This is typical synecdoche, using the grain to refer to the entire meal. In much of the rest of the world where it has been introduced, the remarkable part of this food is the frequent topping of uncooked fish. But even with this misunderstanding of the Japanese term, it's still straightforward synecdoche, because it's using one component of the food to refer to the whole. Even when people think "sushi" means raw fish, they expect it to come with rice; without the rice it's called "sashimi".
Here in the US, we have the Thanksgiving holiday coming up in a few days. It's common to refer to the standard meal as "turkey", although that's only a part of the conventional meal (which is actually mostly vegetarian). Some people don't particularly like turkey, and serve something else such as ham. This doesn't much effect the language used; people still call it "turkey day".
Objecting to this process might make sense in a strictly logical sense. But you're fighting a losing battle. Some of the oldest written texts we have, in the oldest written languages, have examples of this literary device. People use this sort of metaphor in every spoken language (even Esperanto ;-). You can't stop people from using such colorful language. So don't bother complaining about it; we ain't gonna change our behavior any time soon.