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Comment by iamwil | Hacker News Reader

As a curiosity and side note, Salmon wasn't always eaten by the Japanese as sushi. It was considered a garbage fish that you'd grill due to its likelihood of being infected by parasites. It was the Norwegians that had a surplus, and was looking for a new market to open up that salmon sushi became a thing.

https://medium.com/torodex/salmon-sushi-is-not-a-japanese-in...

The Norwegians probably won't pay attention to this initially, but will probably come out against it, given that Salmon is at least a chunk of chain for their industries.

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Andong did a deep dive on it and the norway genesis isn't the full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4

I found that video fascinating as an example of how pernicious myths can be. Makes me wonder how many myths I've propagated to others without verifying them myself.

As with many interesting topics, there's a great Planet Money episode about this too: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/16/440951873/epis...

I don't think it's accurate to call salmon a "garbage fish" (though I've known salmon sushi all my life). It's been the classic protein of choice for traditional Japanese breakfasts (akin to having eggs for breakfast in the West) and a very common rice ball filling.

Succinctly: When people defend meat eating as part of their cultural heritage, they're defending a marketing campaign from the last 80 years.

Source? I've been reading the opposite.

Well that's a leap

I'm not sure who to trust here. This video says that the Norwegian sushi story is a bit of a myth, or over stated due to poor journalism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4

But he definitely has evidence of salmon sushi being eaten before the Norwegians claim to have invented it.

Yes, I was thinking to myself that 'sushi-grade salmon' was an oxymoron.

Only in japan

Even if salmon wasn't traditionally consumed in sushi by the Japanese, wouldn't the later reversal indicate that, even in Japan, there is such a thing as sushi-grade salmon?

The way I understand it, it's not the meat that's sushi-grade. It's the way it's preserved / delivered. Basically if you can eat it raw and not let the parasites from salmon grow, then it's sushi-grade. Most commonly that means storing salmon in a freezer which kills the parasites. (think -50C)

Here's a decent article https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/05/how-to-prepare-raw-fish-...

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