= The “extra bonus protein” in sushi hidden in how salmon sushi is Norwegian =

{WARNING! Graphic images of Japanese sushi worms!}

The fact that salmon used in sushi is a Norwegian invention could be a separate topic altogether. Salmon sushi has quite recently become the second most popular “tradition” in washoku. However, even Alaskan wild salmon especially has become invaded with Japanese sushi parasite worms spreading outwards from Japan. Contaminated as such, the two topics have become inextricably embedded into one another even as a major health issue.

Sushi can be nasty stuff as raw food. In 2017, the American CDC warned about Japanese tapeworms spreading from Japan and now infesting fish along the coastline from Alaska to California.

“All but the latter are caught in North American waters, and researchers warn that the Japanese broad tapeworm may have already spread to coastal waters up and down the Pacific coast of the United States.”

“Gene sequencing confirmed that larvae were in fact D. nihonkaiense.”


US salmon may carry Japanese tapeworm, scientists say
CNN
Jan 11, 2017
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/01/11/heal … index.html

So far, it seems the parasite tide is going clockwise riding the Pacific Gyre from Japan to North America along the Pacific Rim. The East Sea and Korea have yet to be directly affected by the mechanism of ocean currents.

How did this washoku raw food sushi get created? Unless cut and eaten when just caught, it could not start out raw because modern refrigeration obviously did not exist in the past.

Food historians usually state that sushi history supposedly started in humid, tropical Southeast Asia. Raw fish stored in humid, hot, tropical conditions?

The hot tropical climate and muddy river bank culture created the preservation method of storing fish with rice.

Narezushi: Japan’s original sushi
CNN
https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/narezush … index.html

A big stone was put on top, just as in making suan cai. Apparently, the purpose of this compression is to squeeze out any air to induce anaerobic type fermentation (conditions for botulism risk).

The fish would be stored for at least a year then taken out, the rice thrown away, and the fish eaten.

Apparently, the guts were taken out, left out in the open to rot until disintegrated, and the melted mash put back into the fish.

For more details if interested or needing quick reference in changes to sushi from SEA origin to Japanese, this link has nice graphical explanation for quick visual read:

An illustrated guide to the complete history of sushi
Business Insider
Feb 9, 2015
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-com … shi-2015–2

As pervasive as it is today, sushi didn’t come into existence until the 20th century; eating raw fish over rice only became a practice once refrigeration was invented in 1913.

The most primitive form of sushi would probably send most contemporary eaters running. “It smelled really bad,” says Yoko Isassi, an L.A.-based Japanese cooking instructor whose done extensive research on history of sushi. “Today’s sushi is a very new concept.”

“Back then, it was just pickled fish and rice, which would be left in a barrel for a year and weighed down by a heavy stone,” she explains. Called nare-sushi, the original form of sushi can be traced back to Southeast Asia in 3–5 century B.C., when people first began the practice of fermenting fish with salt and rice.

“There are a lot of similarities between the ethnic tribes of southeast China and the Japanese people,” Isassi says. “Because of this, there’s speculation that a certain chunk of people from southern China emigrated to Japan and heavily influenced the food culture.”

The product that we see at our local sushi bars has undergone various stages of transformation to arrive where it is today.

Why, then, were prime cuts like fatty tuna initially discarded and used as fertilizer? And how did vinegar come into the equation?

The invention of refrigeration in the 20th century changed the sushi scene forever.

This is when raw fish slices over rice came into vogue, and sushi morphed from a humble foodstuff into a luxury experience.

The article suggests ties between Japanese and SEA food including southern Chinese cultures. But Japanese eventually wound up making a rapid version by forgoing the fermentation process by using vinegar pickling to simulate the sourness.

Same thing happened with kimuchi, forgo the fermentation to make tangy sweet instant kimchi flavored salad. Cultural pattern?

Previously inaccessible to the population at large, how much did the colonizing flood of confiscated rice from Joseon Korea making rice accessible to the Meiji Japanese masses perhaps had some role for instant sushi, too? It seems the original sushi was reserved for elite.

So, the present day Japanese sushi wound up as an instant imitation of SEA ancient sushi, apparently.

Presently, the two top sushi cuts are tuna and salmon. The second rail for the sushi train is Japan’s recently beloved salmon sushi.

But eating salmon as sushi is even more recent than bloody tuna. Here are a few more articles where the Norwegians take great pleasure taking the credit for shaping Japanese sushi big time!

Changing Tastes: Salmon Goes from Minor Status to New Favorite at Toyosu and Ginza Sushi Shops
Nippon
Sep 11, 2020
https://www.nippon.com/en/guide-to-japan/gu900156/

Serving imported, farmed salmon as traditional Edomae sushi was practically heretical just a decade ago. Today, the fish is a customer favorite at leading sushi shops in Ginza and the Toyosu Market.

Salmon, once considered an inferior sushi topping, is now in high demand, its popularity as an ingredient outstripping even tuna.

Now, however, the lion’s share of fish wholesalers at Toyosu handle salmon.

According to one market professional, the shift is due to declining tuna catches and other fisheries resources worldwide and improving aquaculture, feed, and preservation technologies that have led to an increase in the quality of salmon entering Japan.

Chefs at top-grade sushi restaurants inside the Toyosu wholesale market note that salmon has become an essential menu item.

While Chile and Canada account for a substantial portion of farmed salmon consumed in Japan, by far the most coveted imported variety is Norwegian Atlantic salmon.

Fact: Salmon sushi is a Norwegian invention
The Local Norway
Nov 3, 2015
https://www.thelocal.no/20151103/salmon … -invention

It looks Japanese, but Salmon sashimi is Norwegian.

Your Salmon Sushi is Not Japanese
Limpeh
Jan 31, 2019
http://limpeh.sg/hot-stories/your-salmo … -japanese/

Salmon sashimi is an international favourite, a staple of Japanese cuisine adored by all. However, you would be surprised to find out- salmon sushi is not actually Japanese.

It’s actually Norwegian.

Sushi has been around for hundreds of years, but until about 1995, raw salmon was not consumed at all in Japan. This was because Pacific salmon was exposed to parasites and considered unsafe for raw consumption.

In the 1980s, Norway had a problem: it had too much salmon. Japan also had a problem: it had dwindling fish stocks due to overfishing and a few other factors.

Norway decided that the natural solution was to export its excess supply to Japan.

… getting the Japanese to put salmon on a clump of rice is probably one of Norway’s greatest export successes in the last twenty years.

The more popular fish for sashimi was tuna and sea bream. Initially, many people were hesitant to eat raw salmon because of its reputation for being unsafe when eaten raw.

Chefs would also complain that the meat was the wrong colour, or that the fish had a ‘river-like’ quality that was not well-suited to sushi.

Eventually, salmon sushi became a huge hit and it is enjoyed by millions in Japan and worldwide. And who do we have to thank? Not the Japanese, but the Norwegians.

Just as bluefin tuna was detested by Japanese, it was forced upon them until taste preferences changed. In the heydey 1980’s, Japan Airlines shipped electronics to America then brought back the cheapest fish, frozen bluefin tuna. Back in Japan, the tuna was prepared by the airlines as dirt cheap inflight sushi. The Japanese tourists flocking to America and Europe were forced as trapped passengers to eat bloody tuna sushi airline food. Eventually, the rejected taste was accepted, a new Japanese tradition born started by airplane food of what was once only used for cat food literally.

Salmon eaten raw was also not accepted. After outright rejection, the persistent Norwegians finally convinced a major supermarket chain in Japan to offer raw sushi at below cost prices to entice penny pinching deal seeking housewives to buy. Cooked salmon is one thing, but the Norwegians knew the big money is in convincing Japanese to eat it raw as sushi. Through constant marketing efforts, slowly the slimy bizzare salmon greasy aftertaste was accepted.

But salmon and tuna are increasingly becoming a big risk to eat raw.

Sea farmed fish stocks have less exposure to parasitic worm infestations. That point was what the Norwegians pushed as making sea farmed salmon safe as raw sushi.

As the farmed salmon market finally became lucrative, other players in Canada, Scotland, even Chile got into the game.

The global producers are notorious for pushing more output production that overstress the sea farmed salmon for sake of overriding profits. Sea farmed salmon often is filled with antibiotics to fight off disease rampant in overcrowded pens. The pellet feed produces a lifeless grey color, so colorants are added to artificially make salmon flesh orangish which occurs naturally in the wild. In the United States, the stuff is marketed as “Atlantic Salmon”. Sea lice also afflicts overcrowded pens so a pesticide gets sprayed onto the fish.

Investigative reports on how awful overcrowded sea farming harms the environment and overstressed salmon:

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-sa … story.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment … nvironment

Increasingly, wild caught salmon is used for raw cuts. Not wanting to be shut out of the market that was no longer a niche seasonal specialty, Alaska began promoting wild seasonally caught salmon runs as more pure, nutritious, unadulterated.

At first, the waters near Alaska were not infested. But parasite worms DNA traced to Japanese species have increasingly infested Alaskan stock.

Researchers find signs of Japanese tapeworm in Alaska salmon
Seafood Source
Jan 18, 2017
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/food … ska-salmon

A study published last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that a Japanese tapeworm typically found in Western Pacific fish has been found in salmon from Alaska.

Since its identification in 1986, the Japanese broad tapeworm, Diphyllobothrium nihonkaiense, was thought to exist largely in salmon species caught in Russian and Japanese waters.

But in 2013 researchers found the Japanese broad tapeworm in various larval stages in pink salmon caught in North American fishing waters near Hope, Alaska.

Gene sequencing confirmed that larvae were in fact D. nihonkaiense.

The rise of sushi consumption increases the possibility of the spread of tapeworm to areas where it is not endemic.

Most people with tapeworm infections never show symptoms, but it can lead to diphyllobothriasis, an illness that causes abdominal pain as well as weight loss from vomiting and diarrhea and can last for decades if it goes untreated, even leading swelling and abdominal obstruction.

Most human infection from the tapeworm in Japan and Russia can be traced back to four species of salmon: chum, pink, sockeye and masu.

All but the latter are caught in North American waters, and researchers warn that the Japanese broad tapeworm may have already spread to coastal waters up and down the Pacific coast of the United States.

So the parasites infesting and breeding in Japanese water have now spread to Russia and North American coasts. Global warming and heat released by Fukushima radioactive nucleotides entering the Pacific Ocean perhaps swelled Japanese sushi worm populations that have now expanded and migrated en masse?


Parasitic worm populations are skyrocketing in some fish species used in sushi

ScienceNews
Mar 31, 2020
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/par … sh-species

Researchers aren’t sure if the Anisakis worm increase signals environmental recovery or decline

“Waiter, there’s a worm in my sushi.”

Diners may be more likely to utter those words today than in decades past, as the abundance of parasitic Anisakis worms infecting fishes around the globe is now 283 times what it was in the 1970s, researchers report March 19 in Global Change Biology.

Worms of the genus Anisakis, also called whale worms, can cause vomiting and diarrhea in people who ingest them. Fortunately, freezing fillets kills the parasites, and farmed fish are rarely infected with them.

Sushi chefs and other fish suppliers can spot and remove the worms, which can reach up to 2 centimeters in length.

The fact that Anisakis worms appear to be increasingly common could imply that host species are abundant enough to support a booming parasite population,

Even if a freezing procedure is supposed to render raw salmon and tuna as “sushi grade” safe, what percentage increasingly consist of embedded Japanese sushi worms and parasite eggs that gets eaten as part of “surprise special extra bonus protein” sushi?

As parasitic worm infestations proliferate, will that be the next new sushi trend, the third rail of sushi: raw Japanese sushi parasite worms and eggs?