Source: Wild Mercury Risk: High Call it escolar, butterfish, walu, super white tuna, aburasokomutsu, or whatever you’d like – by any name, this medium-sized ocean fish poses a confounding set of challenges and is problematic at best. In fact, the commercial sale of escolar is banned in Japan and Italy. There’s a good reason for that. Why is…
I recently heard a kid ask his mom in the supermarket aisle, “is canned tuna healthy?” I wanted to jump in. Now, it may be in a can, and it may say chicken, but it’s still a fish. And most people don’t know where their fish came from or how it got to them —…
If you eat a lot of rice, or on a typical gluten free diet, you may want to switch up the types of grain you eat. That’s because there is likely arsenic in rice and that should concern everyone who care about their health. Analytical chemist Brian Jackson says there needs to be more federal…
Many first timers wonder, “is sashimi healthy?” when staring at a few cuts of raw fish. There are not many animal products that can be eaten raw, so it’s no surprise that people question how the raw fish might affect their health. When bought from reputable sources, sashimi is a healthy and safe option that…
Both sushi and sashimi are delicious Japanese dishes. Sushi is not actually raw fish like so many people believe it is…
This unagi sushi recipe uses sustainable sablefish (or gindara, in Japanese) in place of traditional and unsustainable freshwater eel. So perhaps faux-nagi is better term for it! If you love unagi, this sablefish sushi recipe will be a close cousin that you’ll feel a lot better about eating, when considering the sustainability issues of fishing…
Source: Wild, some farmed Mercury Risk: Low Tai is a fish of many faces. The English equivalent of the word is usually considered to be “snapper,” an equally ambiguous term that means very little. Just about anything can be called a snapper, but usually it refers to some type of a long-living fish that grows slowly and…
Source: Wild Mercury Risk: Low Katsuo is one of those Japanese menu terms that can get the average American sushi lover into a bit of trouble. The word corresponds to two different fish: skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis; notice the similarity to katsuo) and bonito (Sarda spp.), a tuna relative in a different and distinct genus. The precise term for…
What is kanikama sushi? Kanikama is known as “imitation crab” in English, but is made from surimi, which is usually a fish like Alaskan Pollock. Kanikama is used in many types of sushi, especially maki, or rolls. The most common example is the California roll, which generally contains imitation crab and avocado. A fish processor creates…
Source: Wild Mercury Risk: Low Atlantic mackerel, or saba, is a schooling fish found throughout much of the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the three types of mackerel most commonly found in sushi bars (the others are aji and sawara.) Of the three, saba is the most widely encountered option. Mackerel does not keep well, and if it is not consumed…
