<p>Yet another test of fish sold in restaurants shows it is often not what you paid for. The latest was 150 samples from 81 places in NYC and 39% was not as described. Think about that: 4 of 10 times you order fish, you get something other than what you ordered and paid for. </p>
<p>13 kinds were identified as red snapper, including one that is a known mercury problem and shouldn’t be eaten by the pregnant* and children. Almost all the fish sold as “white tuna” is escolar. (BTW, that is often the fish put out for samples at sushi places.) It causes diarrhea in many.</p>
<p>The same results, actually worse, were found in LA, Boston and Miami. And the Boston Globe recently checked fish and found exactly the same problem, with all but one case being cheap fish passed off as expensive. (The oddity is one celebrity chef labeled an expensive fish with a cheaper name because he likes the name better. To each his own.)</p>
<p>All 16 sushi restaurants had mislabeled fish. And when you order tuna or snapper, you are most likely to get something else. National supermarkets did best on labeling. Perhaps because they have bulk requirements that point them to specific lots and distributors.</p>
<p>The restaurants, btw, tend to blame the distributors. I think they’re often lying: they’re trying to protect their business by passing it upstream.</p>
<p>As for hand washing, if you want to think about germs - which I don’t - the worst site for germs in a restaurant is the menu. Almost never sanitized. Maybe wiped down. Fingered by everyone. So order, then wash your hands. And use the straw unless you see the drink prepared because servers tend to grab drinks by the rims and that’s where you put your mouth. You can’t live like Howard Hughes but you can be rational.</p>
<p>*I find the phrase “pregnant women” weird because men can’t be pregnant, though pauses can.</p>
<p>The reason it’s pregnant women is because pregnant is an adjective not a noun. Thus, your usage of “the pregnant” is incorrect (although clear).</p>
<p>As one person who reacts to escolar in a rather unpleasant way, I’m grateful for the warning not to eat “white tuna”. However, I’ve never heard of “white tuna” and I eat sushi at least once a week. Since the survey was done in NYC, my instant assessment is that restaurants in NYC are more likely to lie than those in Portland. </p>
<p>As for menus? Around here, they’re mostly printed daily to reflect what’s fresh from the market.</p>
<p>Isn’t hand washing a common practice? I would sure hope that it is! Hands are the dirtiest/filthiest things around and you wouldn’t believe all the crap that we pick up on them. Thats why cell phones are so germy! Our hands touch them all the time. The reason nosocomial infections are so rampant in hospitals b/c health care professionals don’t wash their hands between patients. NASTY.</p>
<p>I always notice when women don’t wash hands when they exit a public bathroom stall… as in the words of dd14 EWWWWWWW!! They wipe themselves then touch the stall handles that are coated with human waste as are the sink faucets/main bathroom door. Ecoli city!</p>
<p>Remember the Hepatitis outbreaks of Taco Bell or was it Jack in the Box many years ago? It was d/t employees not washing ones hands when exiting the bathroom. That form of Hep comes from human excrement.</p>
<p>DId you ever notice how salt shakers/ketchup bottles have a nice film of filth?</p>
<p>I eat sushi every other week and would eat it every week if I could afford it. I only eat sushi at one particular restaurant where I know the sushi chef. I never use the menu…I let him put out what’s fresh. And it is fresh…he personally goes to the main commercial fish market downtown every day at 6 AM. *<em>Except on Sunday and Saturday. He knows me and I know him. A sushi relationship made in heaven.
But please…continue to encourage people not to eat sushi. I am sick of waiting in line for up to an hour for a seat at my sushi bar.
*</em>never ever eat sushi on Sunday. It will not be fresh.</p>
<p>I am very concerned about food safety, but I eat sushi frequently.</p>
<p>I just don’t eat the kinds made with raw seafood. There are plenty of choices made with vegetables, cooked seafood, or other toppings/fillings such as egg.</p>
<p>I suppose there’s some risk of cross-contamination if the same utensils used to slice and handle the raw fish are used to prepare the cooked or non-seafood ingredients as well, but I figure that risk is pretty small. I’m willing to take it.</p>
<p>Why eat sushi when you can get plenty of healthful food from a uber-clean street vendor or from the newest foodtruck on the street. Pretzel and hotdogs anyone? I am always amazed by the cleanliness of their operation and the beautiful sinks. </p>
<p>@musica musica… is that why our local sushi spot has “all you can eat sushi” on Sundays? LOL which I had never heard of… no wonder! :(</p>
<p>@xiggi… I never eat from those food carts! I have never seen a food cart with a sink and have always wondered how they wash their hands after touching all that filthy money, cell phone, equipment etc…</p>
<p>NewHavenCTmom, to be clear what is meant by “/sarcastic post of the day” is ending a sarcastic post. I have yet to see one of those operations with clean or operating sinks. </p>
<p>This said I do think that the excessive manipulation of food, be it through genetic trickery or mislabeling, is really troublesome. More and more people report problems we never thought existed and still baffle our modern medicine. Celiac, gluten, all types of allergies, people in constant pain have all become part of our world. Either we are becoming a truly weak bunch or something is wrong with the type of foods we can buy.</p>
<p>There are longstanding issues in the fishing business having to do with how individual fish get labeled with a particular name that is recognized in the particular place where that fish is to be sold. In many cases several different species, from several different sources, can have the same “sales name” applied depending on the part of the country/world in which they are sold to the consumer. Truly standardizing fish sell-as names relative to fish species will probably require some kind of instant genetic test that can be applied to the individual fish as they are processed.</p>
<p>Years ago, I went with my sushi chef buddy to the downtown fish market at 5AM. It was fascinating. While we were there we ran into an ichthyologist from UCLA who regularly visited to market to study the health and quality of the local catch.
And yes, I too have been eating sushi regularly for at least thirty years and have never gotten sick.</p>
<p>I love sushi, I dont quite eat it every week & I am looking for a workshop on how to make it( mostly on how to get the rice the right kind of sticky- although I also eat sushi made w brown rice)
I love ahi/bigeye tuna, I order the steak though not sushi.
The sushi I usually buy at the grocery store is cooked fish, freshwater fish like eel is always cooked.
[Guess I wont be ordering unagi anymore.](<a href=“http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx”>http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx</a> )
The only seafood I eat raw, are oysters, and then only if there arent any current warnings against doing so. ( but if I have it in a shooter, then the alcohol kills all the germs, right?) ;)</p>
<p>Food & water transmitted Hepatitis is HepA. You can ( & perhaps should), be immunized, but it almost always gets better on its own.
Hepatitis B is transmitted by blood & body fluids. It lives longer on surfaces than HIV, and can be either acute or chronic. I have antibodies to HepB, which I didnt discover till I donated blood. I dont have any risk factors & my family is negative. Vaccines are also available for Hep B.
Hepatitis C is transmitted by blood, it is almost always chronic, but medications are available for both B & C.</p>
<p>Re: wheat sensitivities, producers are paid more for wheat depending on protein content. So high protein varieties are grown more often than they were thirty years ago. Our digestive systems do not adjust that quickly, hence the increase in illnesses.</p>
<p>I eat sushi once a week minimum. My favorite sushi place serves very fresh sushi and is closed on Sunday and Monday.</p>
<p>Not sure if it is any less safe than hamburger or chicken. And wasn’t there a major E. Coli scare with lettuce and spinach not that long ago that resulted in several fatalities?</p>
<p>I do wash my hands at least thirty times a day, though (not OCD, but part of my job).</p>
<p>I have always wondered why the door to the bathroom itself almost never opens outward. Yes, of course I would like to grab the door handle that all the non-hand washers have used. :mad:</p>
<p>Wash your hands, the use the paper towel (if not an “air dry” bathroom) to shut off the water handle and open the bathroom door. Hold the door open with your foot and pitch the towel into the trash if within reach.</p>
<p>I can taste my salmon, nobody can tell me lies about it. I will always have it, I might have food poisonning at some point of time, but there is no way under the sky that they will serve me substitution and I will not know. Do not know much about other fish, but I believe that tuna is relatevely easy to identify. However, given the choice, I order only salmon.
We always have germs on our hands, we absolutely cannot get rid of them. I am for washing hands though, big time hand washer. However, I am not for being totally obsessed about it, that alone might lead to a very dagerous condition.</p>