On supermarket sushi
Would you eat supermarket sushi?
Sushi is one of those foods — like oysters or eggs — that evokes a powerful yet ill-defined feeling of FSP (Food Safety Panic). Sure, sushi is fishy and raw, but what exactly is the danger here? And what is it about being sold from a supermarket that elevates the fear?
Your question is a reasonable one but it’s also a reminder that notions of safe food are more ideological than scientific — a disjointed set of beliefs and fears that we employ to avoid barfing.
Still, you’re not wrong. There are several factors that make sushi distinctly dangerous:
Parasites: raw fish can contain parasites like tapeworms and nematodes*. It’s really really rare, but the wrong sushi could lead to you unwittingly hosting a 30 ft tapeworm in your GI tract for the next 25 years. Having a tapeworm isn’t the worst —your appetite might change a little bit and you might get anemic from the nutrients they’re thieving. But otherwise you won’t know that you have one of these dudes living inside you until he pokes his head out (this actually happens).
parasitic worms
My buddy Rick picked up a worm when he was living in Indonesia and subsisting mainly on fish. He had no clue until months later when he pooped out a giant worm. It was after a weekend of heavy boozing at a beer festival and Rick’s doctor said that the worm had probably died of alcohol poisoning. Savage.
Cooking will kill parasites, but this doesn’t work in the case of sushi. Because, duh, it’s supposed to be raw. So instead, sushi fish is treated to extremely low temperatures, which also happen to kill parasites.
What I’m trying to say is this: every bite of sushi and sashimi you’ve ever eaten was previously frozen solid. If you find this unsavory, consider the alternative — a colony of worms in your gut.
Bacteria. Plot twist: The major risk of bacterial infection from a plate of sushi comes from the rice, not the fish. Rice doesn’t get much attention as a food safety hazard, but it can fuck you up.
The main culprit is called B. Cereus (pronounced, no joke as “Be Serious”). This bacteria is pretty much everywhere and thrives in — you guessed it — cooked rice. It produces a toxin which delivers “mild” food poisoning symptoms—typical vom vom stuff. The sickness usually disappears in a day or so, which means that food poisoning from B. Cereus is probably under-reported and more prevalent than we realize.
But sushi has a defense mechanism against B. Cereus — sushi rice. It wasn’t until I managed a small sushi factory** that I realized sushi rice is not plain white rice. Sushi rice contains a bunch of sugar and vinegar which not only tastes delicious but is conveniently (deliberately?) way safer, because the vinegar increases the acidity of the rice enough that B. Cereus can’t grow.
Practice safe sushi
This is such a critical safeguard that sushi producers who stock the supermarkets are legally required to keep records showing that they added the right amount of vinegar to the rice.
But do they actually follow the sushi law? Based on my experiences, I’d bet that the production records are woefully incomplete but that the sushi is prepared safely. This is one of those instances where culinary preferences and food safety priorities align: the tastiest recipe for sushi rice is conveniently the safest one.
So what role does the supermarket play in the distinct sketchiness of supermarket sushi? Probably none. The fact that the sushi was made off site translates to a vaguely higher food-safety risk: your lunch traveled across town on a truck and hung out in a few chill-ass fridges on its journey toward your gullet. More steps in the supply chain means more opportunities for mishandling — as opposed to sushi made in front of your eyes at a sushi bar.
But I can’t really condemn supermarket sushi categorically. I eat it.
*Specifically, the tapeworm Diphyllobothrium and the round worm Eustrongylides.
**Here’s a fun Anthony Bourdain-style tidbit I learned from that gig — the spicy tuna roll is the sushi equivalent of the soup of the day. In other words, that divine sushi roll with its globular, pink filling is really a medley of scraps. The choice pieces of tuna go into the regular tuna rolls. The mangled edge pieces are combined in with mayo and siracha and — voila — spicy tuna filling. For the record, it’s totally safe and I truly appreciate this kind of culinary shrewdness. I still order spicy tuna rolls.
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