Slate speaks with Sasha Issenberg and Trevor Corson, two writers who have recently published books on the topic of sushi. I knew that pickled fish was more tradtional and that fresh nigiri was a newer invention but I had no idea that the American occupation after the war had so much to do with the popularity of sushi in Japan. Also, it's important to note that there is essentially no testing done on sushi. One thing I've always wondered about is how doctors in the West tell their pregnant patients not to eat sushi during their pregnancy, but I have never heard of that being recommended in Japan.
I personally don't eat sushi that often as I treat it as a delicacy. Maybe once every 2 months? Maybe not even that often.
Slate: How healthy is it to eat sushi? These days, is there any control for, say, mercury in the buying process for the sushi market?
Issenberg: By and large there are very few people that test fish for mercury before they distribute it. There's an absolute absence of information, and there's no transparency whatsoever in the business. Fish often passes through so many hands before it gets to you, even a well-meaning chef might not know where his fish came from—what country, which ocean, how long it's been out of water, if it's fresh, if it's been frozen at all. It can go through 10 different hands. All the rich menu language we get about our lettuce—where it's from and when it was harvested—you never get that when you order sushi. The opportunity to talk with the sushi chef as you are ordering, as you're eating, that's the opportunity to make that last link in the global chain work for you. That's what diners should be looking for—that trusting relationship with your chef, more than asking any particular question about what's been tested, because it might be that the chef won't know.
Corson: I think the sushi chefs are behind the curve on this whole question of ecological impact and health. The next big wave of high-end sushi is going to be environmental health and awareness among chefs. You're just starting to see this now. There are seafood restaurants popping up that are selling only sustainably harvested fish.
Our definition of the highest end of sushi has come to be these fatty red-meat cuts of fish like the fatty tuna and the fatty salmon. And the PCBs in mercury are particularly related to the question of fat. We should recognize that our cultish obsession with these melt-in-your-mouth cuts of rich fish like tuna and salmon are not traditional sushi at all. Going back to our discussion of early sushi—the real kings of sushi in the old days were these lighter, leaner-fleshed fish like sea bream and flounder, which have more consistency, more chewiness, more interesting, subtle flavors, and a lot less fat in most cases.
Chefs who are experienced can suggest a lot of other interesting kinds of fish to eat besides the usual tuna and salmon. And that can also perhaps have better consequences on the health and sustainability fronts.
To me, the great thing about sushi is the experience of trusting the chef, and letting them pick for you. That conflicts with this impulse we all have to know exactly where all our food came from. But there's going to have to be some negotiating between customers and chefs in the world of sushi in the next few years to hammer that out.
Issenberg: The industry is opaque for a reason. It's necessary to direct the fish through the byways of global commerce. Tuna's the best example of this because tuna are too big for any single restaurant to buy whole. Tuna that is 600 pounds needs to be divided up among many users. By definition, these tuna have to be laundered, sometimes on multiple continents, and it's hard to envision any sort of reputable for system for many species of fish that would give a guarantee to a diner or chef that they actually know where their fish came from and how they were caught.
> but I have never heard of that being
> recommended in Japan.
I've heard this a few times in Japan from pregnant women who were told by their doctors specifically not to eat sushi/sashimi, but their chief concern was parasites, not mercury. Some of them went so far as to avoid almost any raw foods (namamono).