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."
Possible none issue soon (Score:4, Interesting)
Severely misleading (Score:1, Interesting)
Escolar makes admirable sushi. It is not "a nasty fish". It is legal for sale in the US and is openly served in many sushi restaurants here. I had some the other night. Most people will not suffer any ill effects from escolar, as long as they don't eat too much of it at once.
Health hazard? In the long run, eating real tuna is probably a bigger health hazard, due to the mercury content. Wired sensationalized a reasonable scientific paper.
Ass-plode (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm more interested in hearing what kinds of places serve the bad sushi, so I can avoid those.
I will not be avoiding sushi.
I've already bought into the fact I'm eating raw fish.
Re:Too late (Score:3, Interesting)
I, for one, welcome my new parasitic overlords.
Although in your case, "innerlords" may be more accurate. Or in a few hours, "underlords".
Re:Technically... (Score:5, Interesting)
What about ManBearPig? In the episode he was described as "half man, half bear, and half pig". So he's 1.5 individuals!
And I definitely agree about the slack thinking. There is nothing quite like a disciplined mind that serves you well with efficient and effective action. Minds become that way by not yielding so easily to the temptation to cut corners and exhibit laziness and it starts with the tiny insignificant things first. Think of all the native English speakers who cannot correctly use words like "loose"/"lose" or "they're"/"there"/"their". It shows that they still struggle with basic usage of their native language, the sorts of issues that they should have worked out back in elementary school. It's noteworthy that foreigners who learn English as a second (or third) langauge tend not to make these mistakes.
Having said that, I'll add that It's okay to have a hard time with something. Not everyone is a great writer or a good speaker and we all have something we're not very good at doing. What's not okay is when an excuse is made for it. The original mistake is just a simple error, like spilling the milk or working an equation incorrectly and getting the wrong answer. It doesn't make you a moron and it doesn't make you a bad person. It's the kind of error that anyone could potentially make because they're human.
The excuse, on the other hand, is cowardly in a sense. It attempts to justify or dismiss something that is clearly incorrect, and all of this to avoid the process of saying "ah-hah, I made a mistake there. Now I know what to do differently in the future." I suspect that they think they are showing weakness or acting "inferior" if for even one moment they say "hey, you're correct; you are right and I had that wrong." The obsession over preventing the perception of inferiority at all costs, including the cost of accuracy, is why I call this cowardly. Nowhere in this can you find the security of knowing that you are who and what you are, whether or not anyone else thinks so.
By and large, people who make those grammatical mistakes are full of excuses. It's the reason why they keep making the same mistakes and their writing does not gradually improve with usage over time the same way that other skills would. You would expect a blacksmith to make a higher-quality knife after 20 years of experience than anything he made when he first started out. So why do native English speakers fail to correctly apply rules of grammar that they should have learned and mastered as children?
The blacksmith has a boss who expects a certain level of job performance, and if he is not internally motivated by an appreciation of his craft then this external motivation will spur him to improve his work. The average Slashdotter who reads and posts for leisure has no external motivation. The only reason why he'd try to get things right is because he values excellence. When you value excellence, you don't see yourself as a static person who scrapes by on the path of least resistance. You see yourself as a dynamic, growing individual who gradually learns more and becomes better at everything you do, whether or not anyone is looking, whether or not anyone is impressed, and whether or not you would have been penalized for a lesser effort. It's an internal thing. The reason to become a better speaker and a better writer is simple: you speak and write on a daily basis, so your life (and quite possibly others) is enriched by being able to do these things well. It's also hard to really enjoy doing something when you struggle to achieve even basic competency.
The antithesis of this is a form of laziness with perhaps some elements of apathy. In that case, you're not really convinced that it's worth doing at all because yo
Re:META comment: PLoS ONE (Score:3, Interesting)
When they add social sciences to their stable of publications, I'll be submitting to them exclusively and encouraging my students to do the same. I hate what the publishers are doing to my field. (And you haters can shut up; my work is as rigorous as it is possible to be when investigating something as amorphous as language and human behavior.)
Thats why I pay more in Texas (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly why i don't trust the cheaper sushi places in Texas...Yes i said Sushi and Texas in the same sentence.
Being born and raised in Hawaii, you are fed almost anything and everything out of the ocean, cooked or raw. Once example is Ahi Poke. Raw tuna marinated. It is freaking delicious! Ask any local in Hawaii and that food is as staple as corn in the midwest. Seafood can be caught/bought fresh daily in Hawaii. So even the cheaper sushi places in Hawaii have awesome sushi that doesn't get you sick. I never got sick once eating sushi in Hawaii. The fish you see on the menu is the fish you eat on your plate, no substitutions (except for maybe a few imitation crab items). And the prices are also cheaper since the fish is caught locally.
Here in Texas, you need to go to a fine-dining seafood restaurant to get the same quality sushi as a regular mom and pop sushi restaurant in Hawaii. ($35 2-roll sushi plate in Texas vs $15 sushi PLATTER in Hawaii). The finer dining establishments in Texas have their fish flown in overnight frozen and prepare it the same day it arrives, it never sits after the fish is delivered. It is setup and prepped for the days meals once it arrives in the morning. I've had the unfortunate privilege of eating at a cheaper sushi place years ago when I first moved to Texas; this was my first sushi experience in Texas. Never again will I ever eat at another cheap sushi establishment here. The sushi was dry, tasted like crap, and even looked cheap. It was a bad experience for me that night when i got home. Now I just stick to the higher price and eat sushi ad finer dining sushi restaurants and go home with a settled stomach and a smile on my face, rather than sit on the porcelain throne all night.
Re:Buyer Beware! (Score:5, Interesting)
I currently live in an inland city, hundreds of kilometers from the the nearest ocean. This is why I refuse to eat sushi at the restaurants here since the fish will not be very fresh.
I remember reading this years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/nyregion/08SUSH.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
Food and Drug Administration regulations stipulate that fish to be eaten raw ? whether as sushi, sashimi, seviche, or tartare ? must be frozen first, to kill parasites. "I would desperately hope that all the sushi we eat is frozen," said George Hoskin, a director of the agency's Office of Seafood. Tuna, a deep-sea fish with exceptionally clean flesh, is the only exception to the rule.
It seems once a year, someone re-discovers the amazing fact that uncooked fish should not be served fresh.
Please, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
PLoS charges scientists to get published. A big part of what caused the economic collapse is that rating agencies started to hand out AAA ratings to securities that didn't deserve them, and they did this because the issuers of these securities were paying the rating agencies. This PLoS ONE's business model is the same thing. PLoS ONE receives more money when it publishes more articles.
Doesn't this just scream CONFLICT OF INTEREST to anyone else?
Please, I'll take Science and Nature any day.
Re:Ass-plode (Score:1, Interesting)
There are many places where they serve Escolar with full disclosure. A number of fine Western-style restaurants also serve it as well (sometimes as Walu). This is not a case of serving poison soaked fugu. I think escolar is a great change from normal sushi breeds. If it means an extra couple minutes on the toilet in the morning, at least it was worth it unlike going to Taco Bell or my local Chinese take out.
Re:Better take the alternative (Score:1, Interesting)
Notice he told you that it was the non-100% beef product he was referring to? How in any way does this compare with your experience with real, whole meat and a meatgrinder? He's railing about food processing industry methods, not meat-eaters!
He is almost certainly telling the truth about what he saw, the BBC and Channel 4 have both aired undercover investigations of "food" factories, showing how much non-meat stuff goes into processed meat and meals in the name of profit. Vegetarian food, too, is watered down and adulterated to cut costs, and enhanced with "Flavour Enhancer" and "Natural Colourings", made from meat products, no less!
Re:Possible none issue soon (Score:3, Interesting)
That is, fish farming uses more fish than it creates
That's true of any form of agriculture. Biological systems are not 100% efficient. Crops will leach nitrogen out of the soil, requiring fallow, legumes or fertilizer. It gets even worse when you consider that at harvest time, you remove the crop and carry off all that nitrogen. Cows, pigs and chickens are even less efficient. They eat inefficient grass and digest it in an inefficient manner, so that you need a lot of grass to keep one cow alive.
On the whole though, as a source of protein, fish aren't too bad. They're cold blooded, so their feed conversion ratio is quite good - they don't need to produce heat to maintain a constant body temperature. 1.5 - 2 grams of food will give you 1 gram of fish, although it varies by species. Compare that to a warm blooded animal - where the ratio of food/flesh is 6:1 or worse.
No, the REAL problem is the large and exponentially growing HUMAN population. THAT is what is making ALL of these methods of protein production unsustainable in the medium term. More efficient food production methods are being found - aquaponics, for example. But if we don't stop breeding, well, it's the crash part of the J curve in an earth-sized petri dish for us.
Re:Endangered species? No (Score:2, Interesting)
Whoever is moderating these posts as informative is as ill-informed as the authors. No fisherman in their right mind would place an unsorted catch in their hold. The fish are sorted on deck and the bycatch is disposed of at sea. Possessing the wrong species of fish or fish that exceed size limits can result in large fines and seizure of your boat by the authorities. Some fisheries such as shrimp deal with bycatch as high as 90% of a given trawl.
Re:Technically... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your *dancing* makes us *frumple*. Get off our *below!*
Re:Buyer Beware! (Score:4, Interesting)
When you make your sandwich, it doesn't matter much if your uncooked meat slices (most luncheon meat is "cooked" by injecting it with salt and spices) are a little thick or wide. You just try to get roughly the right total amount and balance it off with veggies.
When you make sushi, if you don't get juust the right size, the texture is all wrong. Something that should be sublime and delicious becomes a disgusting gag inducer. Even the taste seems different. Inexperienced or American* sushi chefs can easily make that mistake, and home chefs all the moreso. (*"American" cuisine being of the "it's not the highest quality, so lets give them more of it" bent more often than it ought)
And then there's Fugu, which is extra difficult because a little bit of toxin is part of the experience.
I don't know how "sushi chef" compares to "executive chef" in terms of preparation difficulty, but it's definitely way above "sandwich artist" on the scale of difficulty.
I can't speak to raw escolar, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
It also very nearly made me shit my pants, about 2-3 hours later, when I was driving home and had nowhere to stop. (Once I did get to a toilet, the results were distinctive, to say the least.) I generally have a very strong stomach, and if this fish did that to me, I can't imagine what it would do to someone who had IBS or something comparable.
I don't think the fish should be banned, and calling it "toxic" seems strong. But I do think it's totally irresponsible of a restaurant to serve something like that without informing their customers, and serving it under a potentially deceptive name is even worse). In my case, the waitress didn't utter a peep about any possible ill effects, though maybe she just didn't know.
Re:So technically (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is that you could order sushi and not get fish, but you could never order sushi and not get rice.
I've had sushi containing raw fish.
I've had vegetarian sushi.
I've had sushi containing cooked fish.
I've had sushi containing cooked beef or chicken.
But I've never had sushi that doesn't contain rice, because there's no such thing.
Re: Technically... (Score:2, Interesting)
Nope. In my example, both people thought of the same thing, though one didn't like the word choice. For your example, the two people will likely not see the words as having the same meaning.
Chimpanzees and teenagers have been known to communicate successfully among themselves using all manner of sounds, words, and gestures. If you remove the sounds and gestures, and write the words down on paper for someone else to read, what have you got, other than incorrectness mixed with nonsense?
So spoken communication can't be a language unless it's written. Thus, the native tribes in Alaska had no language until the White Man showed up and put their sounds to the English letters? You are the one speaking nonsense. You are defining language in a manner inconsistent with all official definitions. It has to be written to be a language. If it is a language and seems like English, if it's between teenagers, it's not a real language if it isn't proper English. I don't know what you are arguing for or against anymore. All I know is that you don't like people communicating accurately with each other using words you don't approve of. You should move to France and join their language committee. Then you'll get to dictate language. For all other languages on the planet, it is how people use it, not how some jackass thinks it should be used.
Brawndo is literally awesome!
I could care less.
Is that the world you want to live in?
And what specifically is wrong with the first sentence? He may literally be awe-inspiring. It happens. Now, if you'd been talking about the guy that's 7'2" on the basketball team that is "literally 20 feet tall" then you might have a case. But someone can actually inspire awe. I don't know for Brawndo's case, but it could be accurate for the dictionary definition of those words.
As for "I could care less" there are competing theories, and one is that it is an abbreviation of "I could care less, but I'd have to try." The fact that the speaker is so apathetic as to not even complete that sentence would only add to such apathy. However, if you believe that it could only have come from "I couldn't care less" and is incorrectly used, rather than incompletely used, then yes, you could have some objection. However, I believe that the number of people in the US who say "I could care less" exceed the number that say "I couldn't care less" so that ship has sailed. Any objections you have are way too late to have any effect. It is a part of the language and means "I don't care" and everyone who hears it knows that, including you.
Re:Technically... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nah; I think what the poster was getting at is that the OED folks, like almost all dictionary makers, don't push their publications as an authoritative guide to correct English usage. Rather, their task is to document the history of the English language. If you look around randomly in the OED and read many of its cites, you'll find plenty that aren't what you'd call good English. This is because they're trying to document the earliest uses of words with various meanings, not the earliest correct usage (whatever that might be).
Documenting correct usage would be a hopeless task anyway. Could you imagine how valuable the OED would be for its users if it contained only "correct" cites? They'd be perpetually bogged down in flame wars over what constitutes correct English, and they'd be unable to produce the primary reason for their value.
I was a bit amused by the thought of the OED being made an ANSI standard ...
(Hmmmm ... I seem to have triggered a bug in '.'s handling of nested tags. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get it to handle those levels of quotes in any sensible manner. The HTML is massaged into something a bit bizarre - and not quite correct. It appears that the code can't handle four levels of nesting. Apparently this is the first time I've tried such a thing. ;-)