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'Sushi parasites' have increased 283-fold in past 40 years

105 points| elorant | 6 years ago |eurekalert.org

45 comments

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[+] philshem|6 years ago|reply
If parasites weren't bad enough:

> They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/science/22fish.html

> A piece of tuna sushi has the potential to be an endangered species, a fraud or a health hazard. All three of these cases were uncovered in this study.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... and https://www.wired.com/2009/11/tunadna/

[+] dghughes|6 years ago|reply
I'm not a fish eating person but I live in a fishing (and farming) region. I've heard people from here who have gone away on vacation say often the fish they are served is wrong. Usually it's a cheaper type substituted for more expensive species of fish.
[+] csytan|6 years ago|reply
From the article: "Despite their name, herring worms can be found in a variety of marine fish and squid species. When people eat live herring worms, the parasite can invade the intestinal wall and cause symptoms that mimic those of food poisoning, such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. In most cases, the worm dies after a few days and the symptoms disappear."
[+] davycro|6 years ago|reply
I thought all sushi had to be flash frozen to kill parasites. Is this a myth?
[+] tyfon|6 years ago|reply
You will still eat the worms, not that it is necessarily a bad thing. When I go fish in the south of Norway I see these worms in maybe 1 out of 10 fish I catch. I personally don't eat them but I don't think it's unhealthy as long as they are dead.

Considering health and seafood, I'd be much more worried about is eating Norwegian farmed salmon, that stuff is poison [1]. The amount of toxins has not go down since this article was warning Norwegians.

I never touch it myself and the wild fish you catch close to the mares are monsters compared to the fish that does not consume leftovers from feeding the salmon.

[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3... (Google translate)

[+] molticrystal|6 years ago|reply
At least for the US, they requires some type of process but it is messier than perhaps it should be. For one the responsibility for freezing the fish can be shifted between the restaurant serving and the vendor, and might not be effective. This is because time tables for acceptable methods of freezing fish vary in length depending on the temperature they are stored at. Some of the higher temperatures takes a couple weeks, and for example a restaurant might be buying fresh fish and not storing them in a freezer long enough.
[+] dntbnmpls|6 years ago|reply
> Is this a myth?

No. Fish for sushi is recommended to be flash frozen or frozen for X number of days to kill the parasites. FDA recommendations for freezing fish to kill parasites.

"Freezing and storing at an ambient temperature of -4°F (-20°C) or below for 7 days (total time), or freezing at an ambient temperature of -31°F (-35°C) or below until solid and storing at an ambient temperature of -31°F (-35°C) or below for 15 hours, or freezing at an ambient temperature of -31°F (-35°C) or below until solid and storing at an ambient temperature of -4°F (-20°C) or below for 24 hours are sufficient to kill parasites. Note that these conditions may not be suitable for freezing particularly large fish (e.g., thicker than 6 inches). "

https://www.fda.gov/media/80777/download

You could freeze fish in your freezer since most freezers can do -4°F or lower, but it will just take longer to kill the parasites.

People also catch fish, check for parasites visually and then prepare it sushi/sashimi style and eat it. Even here, you'll generally be okay but the odds of getting sick increases.

Also, the article is from eurekaalrt and the headline is clickbait nonsense.

Even if "sushi parasite" increased 283 fold, what's the increase in sushi consumption? It went from pretty much 0 40 years ago to being almost ubiquitous today.

[+] DennisP|6 years ago|reply
Last I saw, that was the case in the U.S. but not Japan. Sometimes there were still U.S. cases from people making sushi at home. I'm no expert though.
[+] majos|6 years ago|reply
Per the article, “increased 283-fold” means a specific variety of worm is now more common in the fish. It doesn’t mean parasites have become more common in people. It’s consistent with these results for sushi freezing to still kill the worms.
[+] weaksauce|6 years ago|reply
Not all fish is required to be frozen to kill the parasites actually. there are classes of fish that are considered not significantly dangerous to warrant that procedure. I looked up the fda guidelines on it a while ago.
[+] proverbialbunny|6 years ago|reply
I heard flash freezing can make the sushi taste better too. Does anyone know if this true?
[+] etrk|6 years ago|reply
It's a recommendation by the FDA in the US, not an enforced regulation.
[+] cnst|6 years ago|reply
Except Tuna, because Tuna is known to be exceptionally clean fish. Salmon definitely needs to be frozen.
[+] lainga|6 years ago|reply
Exception is for very deepwater fish like yellowfin tuna and skipjack.
[+] paulsutter|6 years ago|reply
Where was the testing? After living in Japan I stopped eating sushi in the US. It's always painful when someone asks me to recommend a "good sushi place" here, I'm not sure what to say.
[+] softwarejosh|6 years ago|reply
personally I prefer US sushi places, local salmon in particular is an insanely buttery and delectable slice of raw fish, Ive never understood the japanese obsession with rice, it’s fine but salmon is better imo
[+] Axsuul|6 years ago|reply
Just say Los Angeles
[+] tomaszs|6 years ago|reply
This article is a clickbait. The title tells about sushi parasites, but there is no such thing.
[+] mirekrusin|6 years ago|reply
I also heard that salmon farming is the biggest "consumer" of antibiotics, is that true?
[+] pvaldes|6 years ago|reply
Not even remotely playing in the same league as chicken
[+] egberts1|6 years ago|reply
That proverbial gas station sushi. There, I said it, mark me down. It was worth it.
[+] scottlocklin|6 years ago|reply
This is a horse shit study turned into click bait. It's a meta analysis (aka they built linear regression models on top of reported numbers in papers over a 37 year time span) and they explicitly state that it mostly applies to cetaceans rather than human beings. There are other results in the paper that indicate the methodology was flawed: aka other closely related, or ecologically similar worm species didn't increase in the samples in the meta data.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mYokKOGyhQxKntSnogcm...

There's a larger lesson to be learned here, but at the moment stating the obvious about mass media dipshits reporting on bad stats doesn't seem to be appreciated.