Up to the 1990s, raw salmon sushi was not eaten in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Up to the 1990s, raw salmon sushi was not eaten in Japan

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The norwegian salmon farming indsutry is endelssy facinating. Such a young industry has grown from the invention of floating open net pen cages in western norway in the 50s to a 1,4 million tonne export in 2020 worth approximately 7 billion dollars.

Due to the technical and biological challenges of food production in the sea as well as the environmental and social pressures to transform the industry, it is now one of the most innovative food production sectors in the world.

Digitalization and AI counting of parasites [0], lasers to remove lice [1] and huge offshore installations to minimize coastal impact [2] and crispr sterilized fish [3] are some examples of innovation happening right now in the sector.

[0]: https://aquabyte.ai/ [1]: https://www.stingray.no/delousing-with-laser/?lang=en [2]: https://www.salmar.no/havbasert-fiskeoppdrett-en-ny-aera/ [3]: https://www.hi.no/en/hi/temasider/aquaculture/editing-the-ge...

It's not great for wild Salmon though, currently.

Yes, they try a lot of stuff. I worked in the library of what is now NTNU Ålesund when I studied, and I remember coming across books about some long abandoned experiments, such as "havbeite", sea grazing. The idea was that they would just release young farmed fish and catch them later. A lot of crazy ecological recklessness like that, but also a lot of creative attempts to do the right things (prevent escapes, minimize antibiotics use and minimize suffering and damage from salmon louse).

This Twitter thread is mostly a summary of this article, which provides more detail, albeit maybe in a less easily digestible (ha!) form:

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

The thread is actually wrong on the campaign cost, which might be attributable to the AI-powered summarisation the tweet author boasts about. Norway spent 30m kroner (NOK) on the campaign, which is about $3.75 million instead of the $30m the tweet claims. And the thread misses out the potential return on investment: Norwegian salmon imports to Japan went from 400 million NOK before the campaign, to 1.8 billion NOK in the second half of the 80's.

> which might be attributable to the AI-powered summarisation the tweet author boasts about

Just one of the pitfalls of relying on AI and not double-checking the information. I worry for the future. How much might the past be rewritten in the future as a result?

The funny thing was that the author apparently used multiple sources, and has different import figures from the article as a result. But they didn't spot the order-of-magnitude error in the campaign cost.

Bah. Complaining that AI gets summaries wrong is like complaining that a singing dog is out of tune.

Very interesting share, thanks.

When I transitioned to eating more fish, because I wanted to be "healthier" I started eating more salmon because that's the fish available in German supermarkets, but it's not a taste I ever particularly liked.

What's more interesting to observe is that my daughter also doesn't really like it. When you have a 1 year old eating all sorts of fresh fish, but pushing away the salmon, you can't help but wonder, if there is something about food quality that small children taste that we cannot.

Kids are picky about food in all kinds of weird ways, and this doesn't even seem particularly surprising -- if it's a food you don't like, why would your kid like it? I think that's a simpler explanation than there being something wrong with the fish.

Interesting! Maybe she just inherited your taste in fish? I love salmon (also live in Germany) and my 4 year old likes it as well (but my 6 year old doesn't).

Mostly a vegetarian diet here now, but what I miss the most is absolutely salmon. Red meat or white fish I don't crave, but that red salmon, mmmm.

But no, it's not "interesting" how your kid doesn't like it. It doesn't mean anything about the health about the product. Does your kid like candy?

Treat yourself with a salmon! It's 2023!

Farmed salmon doesn't have the red colour we associate with salmon, and they add that colour later so that it looks right to us.

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/your-salmon-might-be-lying-...

Interesting article. It seems to be saying that wild salmon are pink because of a pigment in their diet, but farmed salmon are only pink because of a pigment in their diet.

Indeed. Farmed ones aren't given the same diet. I suspect it's not as healthy for them either, but it does well enough for industrial purposes. Think of cattle feed v grass, etc

I absolutely love raw salmon – but cook it, it is meh – I'll still eat it if offered, but for cooked fish it is far from my first choice

salmon gets unpleasantly fishy if you overcook it. a little browning round the edges while leaving the centre raw but warmed can be amazing

I do love salmon sashimi though

kids are very empathic. more likely than not, you’ve given off signals that she’s picked up on. or it could just be genetic

this idea that she’s somehow detecting an intrinsic wrongness to salmon sounds a lot like confirmation bias

> When you have a 1 year old eating all sorts of fresh fish, but pushing away the salmon, you can't help but wonder, if there is something about food quality that small children taste that we cannot.

Definitely. I think you’re onto something here. Keep digging.

> When you have a 1 year old eating all sorts of fresh fish, but pushing away the salmon, you can't help but wonder, if there is something about food quality that small children taste that we cannot.

Don't think there's anything to wonder about here at all. Kids' tastebuds are different, and they're just like anyone else - individuals who can decide they don't like something.

I don't think kids know anything about food quality. There is also a matter of preference but to say that the small children sense unhealthy/bad quality food is ridiculous. They would probably eat "only" junk food and sweets if given the choice.

Our daughter is legendary in our family for the quantity of smoked salmon she consumed at the same age.

My kids ate salmon starting at a young age. It's always been their favorite fish.

Same here - my son is an incredibly picky eater, and salmon is the one thing we can rely on him eating.

Sigh we need to just rename AI that does this Stupid Intelligence or something.

The most recent IQ test I've seen put Chat GPT at 83. I expect 100 by June and 150 by 2024.

3000 IQ within a decade, calling it. You heard it here first folks!

As per the article Bjorn Eirik Olsen was a key participant. His love of Japan was driven by his interest in Aikido, and he has become one of the relatively few westerners to reach 7th Dan. He's a very nice guy, and entertaining with stories from those days.

IMO it isn't much about parasites, it is more a B2B sales tactics turned B2C, and turns out general public likes it. The Project Japan pitch in 1985 was targeting a group of japanese industry experts. It is this group of expert that says the salmon contains parasites hence the customer won't eat it. But in the 90s, after the striking the deal with Nichirei, they find that customer actually like the fatty taste of salmon, parasites wasn't a concern to most.

It's like facebook/tiktok pitching their platform to an HN crowd and we obsess over security, privacy, social bubble, vision and stuff, turns out no one give a damn. People like scrolling on the phone aimlessly. That's the fatty salmon

This tracks with the historic consumption of other species that are also hosts to zoonotic nematodes raw. It's worth noting that wild salmon do have a very high natural prevalence of Anasakid roundworms.. however these aren't microscopic by any means and a sushi chef could easily screen for them.

I think it probably was just about having a consistent, abundant and standardized product rather than highly seasonal and variable wild salmon. You might not be able to beat the right word salmon in the right part of the year if you are are real connoisseur but that isn't amenable to mass consumption. The fat distribution is different as well in a farm raised salmon even if the amount was the same, large visible deposits and it has a very noticable mouth feel and flavour.

Long story short I reckon farm raised salmon took off there for the same reason it has in chain restaurants (cooked) in the US.

There are still old-school sushi chefs who refuse to eat salmon. And the parasite concern was absolutely a major problem.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/729396914

Which is the same as "there are still old school HN technologists who refuse to use Facebook. And the privacy/security is absolutely a major problem."

It's not the same at all. At first glance it might feel the same, but the structural questions are different. The fact that the Facebook does have privacy problems does not show that Atlantic salmon does actually have parasites problems in the same way that pacific salmon does.

Argument by analogy is not good argumentation.

In the USA fish for sushi is suggested by the FDA (and required by local law in some places: New York city comes to mind) to be frozen to -31F for 15 hours (or -4F for seven days), specifically to kill parasites. Given that virtually all salmon in the US has been frozen, I wouldn't worry about parasites in salmon sushi here.

Previous discussion of NPR article covering the 1980s push by Norway to get Japanese people to accept salmon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10243823

I've always wondered about the history of eating raw meat. My family personally doesn't eat anything raw because of the news reports we've read of people getting sick (or worse) after consuming raw meat, and we make sure to only eat fully cooked meat.

My grandparents' generation also seem more familiar with fully cooked meat, I'm wondering whether raw meat came along more recently and where it originated from. At least in the West.

In Poland, steak tartare (raw ground beef with raw egg yolk, onion, fermented cucumber, pickled mushrooms, salt and pepper) has always been massively popular.

In the 90s and 00s, raw yolk was optional due to "popularity" of salmonella. Raw beef meat was somehow still acceptable.

In Germany, "Tartar" is without egg or veggies, but more spices. Common, just like "Mett" which is raw ground pork with onions, salt and pepper.

In some areas of Germany, they add a raw egg yolk into the raw pork or beef, and add minced onions, all to be eaten on breakfast bread.

I might have to try that egg yolk thing some time ;) I usually eat the Mett out of a bowl with a spoon :D

Kogel-mogel is an example of a dessert made with raw eggs. Highly recommend, especially with a few drops of vodka or rum for tanginess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kogel_mogel

I specifically meant the raw pork combination. I use raw egg yolks to make ice cream already.

I have never seen a pork version but here in Czech Republic they generally have beef steak tartare (tatarák) on topinka - bread that has been fried in oil. Often people rub garlic onto the bread before adding meat to it.

I refuse to eat any "bread" other than knedlíky when in Czechia.

Hah, not a fan?

I'm such a huge fan of knedlíky that it's the only bread-like thing I'd eat when in .cz!

Oh I was asking if you’re simply not a fan of regular CZ bread otherwise, but now I see you’re a super fan of knedlíky so it makes sense :-D

What are your feelings on meruňkové knedlíky? Slightly different from the normal ones you’d have with like svíčková but they’re quite polarising …

Fermented cucumber? Interesting, down here in Slovakia it's similar recipe only with pickled cucumber (and without mushrooms). Also some people add ketchup and a drop of worcester sauce.

I've seen the terms pickling and fermenting used interchangeably so to explain:

By fermentation of cucumbers and most non-starchy veggies, I mean lacto-fermentation with just veggies and brine (salty water). They become acidy over time as lactic acid bacteria do their magic and create a probiotic. Sauerkraut or kimchi are examples of fermented white cabbage and napa.

Pickling involves using acid such as vinegar from the beginning.

Gets confusing though as in the anglophone west at least, 'Pickles' as a noun refer to lacto fermented cucumbers e.g. kosher dills

In the anglophone West, most pickled products contain vinegar, even when they're labelled "kosher style", so it's simply the only term that many people are familiar with. In US, some aren't even aware that you can ferment veggies in brine.

Sure. My point is simply people can be referring to lacto-fermented cucumbers without realising it. The vinegar is often added for shelf stabilisation of fermented cukes is my understanding.

Yeah, I know the difference as we also ferment cucumbers, in the (Slovak) tartar recipe it's always pickled (in vinegar, dill etc).

Also (napa) kimchi is something of an outlier to your rule of just veggies and brine, because the napa cabbage does not contain a lot of starch, rice flour (starch) and in some recipes sugar is added to aid the fermentation. This is not needed for the sauerkraut/kysla kapusta/kapusta kwaszona as it naturally contains enough sugars for the fermenting bacteria to feast on. But this is just me being pedantic, sorry.

Fermented tastes way better imo. My aunt makes sun fermented cucumbers with horseradish and chilies. Yummy! She washes them with hot water two times and then puts them in brine.

Steak tartare is also very common in France

Italy, France, Switzerland - beef tartar is also popular and omni-present.

It is also very good. Coming from a country where tartar doesn't exist it took an effort to decide and try it the first time, but if you are OK with medium rare steaks, the taste is similar and the texture is that of a rare burger (the meat is chopped up into tiny pieces). Seasoning and condiments take it to the next level, so it's absolutely not like biting off a raw steak or chewing on a spoonful of ground meat :)

In Germany, raw pork is consumed. As a non-German, this was an extremely surprising thing to learn as in the Anglosphere it seems that consumption of raw pork is possibly a stronger taboo than consumption of dog or horse meat. I spoke to a German doctor about the issue who explained that all pigs are inspected for parasites at slaughter and it’s relatively rare - but not totally absent - for consumers to get a tapeworm.

Similarly raw chicken is consumed in Japan. [1]

The pork thing is also a bit of momentum. It was problematic to eat raw pork in the US before 1980 when Congress passed the Swine Health Protection Act. This prohibited feeding swine with trichinella-contaminated food, which was the parasite most likely to get you sick. [2] The risk these days is almost negligible and we're seeing restaurants starting to serve pork cooked pink in the middle. [3]

[1] https://matadornetwork.com/read/raw-chicken-sashimi-tokyo/

[2] https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/anima...

[3] https://www.seriouseats.com/case-for-raw-rare-pink-pork-food...

Undercooked pork is still a problem as it can transmit viruses such as Hepatitis E. Like chicken, you really need to know and trust your source.

Eating raw chicken is generally considered to stupid in Japan, unlike fish, horse or beef. It's shame that some restaurant provides that. Almost all people don't eat random raw chicken at home, but some eat at restaurant. Maybe alcohol drinks makes wrong risk evaluation. https://www.fukushihoken.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/shokuhin/eng/faq/...

It's not a traditional food in most area, but just stupid. Kyushu is exceptional. https://dime.jp/genre/1246382/

For what it's worth, I'm quite unlikely to eat any raw meat at home because I know it's higher risk and that I don't feel I have sufficient experience to prepare it myself - or to know where to source meat suitable for consumption raw. I trust a chef at a restaurant however because it's both their job, and if they do it wrong, they won't be in business much longer.

Yeah I wish so. The truth is that affordable restaurants aren't professional for food safety, and they continue business.

It should also be noted that the restrictions regarding pork and beef for raw consumption are very strict.

Some time ago, I prepared Beef Wellington for German friends and served it pink in the middle. They were most uncomfortable with it. I was surprised in light of the high consumption of raw pork locally.

IME other Germans like to have their burgers well well well well well, really really dead, done.

Any reason why? Someone else mentioned they also murder their steaks...

Might as well not even eat meat if you're going to incinerate it.

They might like the taste of caramelised meat.

I also like my steak well done although we also eat sushi and proschutto.

> They might like the taste of caramelised meat.

So do I, that’s why my burgers are caramelized on the outside, but that doesn’t really relate to what it looks like on the inside.

Prosciutto amico mio, grazie!

As a Brit I'm a bit skeptical about anything below a well done burger. We were taught that you should always fully cook ground beef as the mincing process can mix in pathogens from the surface of the meat. I suppose this doesn't apply if the beef is safe to make tartar with or maybe if you sear the outside of the cut you're going to mince before mincing it.

That said a number of mid-range burger chains offer rare burgers here, and in such cases I tend to go medium which typically nets results on the less overcooked end of well done anyway.

New regulations came in a few years ago to cover that. Hopefully anywhere serving rare burgers is diligent about their supply chain and kitchen processes.

https://catersafeconsultants.co.uk/new-regulations-rare-burg...

https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/f...

I would never eat a not fully cooked ground beef product from a random burger store. That's just common sense, ask your mother.

I am fairly comfortable with medium rare but I remember seeing a video of Beef Wellington recipe and I was not super comfortable with it being pink either. Since it has a pastry around it, imo pastry soaking pink juices makes it a bit harder to sell

I would estimate it’s like <10% of Germans who eat raw pork (“mett”, I wonder if the word is etymologically related to meat). In younger generations even fewer that eat it. There also may be a regional factor to it.

Mettigel is the stereotypical “70ies dinner party” dish that grosses people out.

And for regular meats, steaks, etc. people like to eat it rather well-done. If I want to get a steak done medium I order medium-rare here. People will order medium and complain to the chef if it’s actually medium. The whole spectrum of is shifted to the well done side.

I’ve been to two weddings (aged 35ish couples, all northerners, one location in Warsaw though) where they had Mettigel (and that was eaten a lot), and our local REWE (SH) prepares a few kg daily of fresh Mett, I don’t think that would be worth it for < 10%.

Also, the (skewing rather young) /r/de subreddit tends to look very favorably on Mettigel.

I would be surprised to see raw pig meat interested of raw beef in Poland. Steak tartare is a very popular dish, while raw pork is not really eaten widely.

It was a German couple, but she is of Polish descent and has family in Poland still. And I’d bet money on the broom being the one requiring the Mettigel anyway ;)

Schleswig Holstein, probably the polar opposite to baden Württemberg where I live

I work for an SME in the mechanical engineering sector and when someone from the mechanics dept. has their birthday it's not unusual for them to sponsor a few kilos of Mett, Onions and bread rolls - it's all gone by the end of the day.

Wasn't any different in the institute at university, I think we're seeing differences in our bubbles.

> a few kilos of Mett, Onions and bread rolls - it's all gone by the end of the day.

Is it good?

Be sure to top it with onions, salt and freshly ground pepper.

Edit: It's popular enough for there to be vegan Mett in Germany (also best with thinly sliced onions, salt and pepper) which comes extremely close to the pork version. [0]

[0] (German) https://www.ruegenwalder.de/produkte/veganes-muehlen-mett-fe...

Good point re root of meat. Although it appears there is a joint root to both. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mett

I can't confirm your findings, either personally or through other means. According to this poll [1] only 29% of men reported to not eat "Mett".

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/947071/umfrag...

In Japan I tried raw chicken. My body almost threw it up from pure conditioning from knowing what it was, but it just tasted like most other raw meats, nothing too special to warrant that response. I definitely had to gush it down with some drink. I'm from Spain and chicken has to be 100% well cooked, absolutely no exceptions. I didn't compare it until now, but actually I'd bet it'd be at a worse-level than eating cooked dog meat. We also don't eat raw pork over here, cow seems to be the only one that is acceptable with low degrees of processing or even raw, and even then it's a bit rare (pun intended :)).

Q: How was the raw chicken? A: Foul (pun intended:))

I had some raw horse meat in Japan some years ago. It was definitely an... interesting experience. Both knowing what animal it was (horses are generally considered a "pet" or treasured working animal in my culture) and knowing that it was raw and untreated. I was filmed eating it, and you can see me making a brave face.

Horse meat is a staple at sushi restaurants across Tokyo.

Why would you possibly want to eat raw chicken? It has an abysmal smell when raw and goodness me, the Spanish (and everyone else) have it right. I'd refuse raw chicken and I try pretty much everything.

Presumably for the same reason you'd want to eat any other meat raw. There's no advantage to doing it, but people do it anyway.

I ate raw liver (liver sashi) at a restaurant in Japan a few years back. Fun fact: This is now banned: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/fo...

> As a non-German, this was an extremely surprising thing to learn as in the Anglosphere it seems that consumption of raw pork is possibly a stronger taboo than consumption of dog or horse meat. I spoke to a German doctor about the issue who explained that all pigs are inspected for parasites at slaughter and it’s relatively rare - but not totally absent - for consumers to get a tapeworm.

Tapeworm isn't what we're mainly worried about, at least for the American part of the Anglosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis

> Infection is typically treated with antiparasitic medication such as albendazole or mebendazole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albendazole

> Rare but potentially serious side effects include bone marrow suppression which usually improves on discontinuing the medication

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albendazole#Side_effects

> irreversible bone marrow suppression

What.

Yes - trich, you’re right. I still feel a wave of disgust when I think of consuming raw pork. But as shown in Germany, trich is low probability if the animal is raised right - and thus the disgust is a cultural thing, not universal standard.

I've been living in Berlin for 9 years and still can't bring myself to try raw pork. We've lived in Austria before that and they don't eat raw pork either (at least neither me nor my native-born Austrian wife ever had any), so I suspect this is a northern German thing and that they probably also don't traditionally eat raw pork in southern Germany (but I don't know for sure).

Yes, Mett is more of a (north-) german thing, you wont really find that in Austria.

Maybe knowledge and techniques to make raw meat/fish safe have improved in the last decades?

The roots of sushi were in preservation of fish by fermentation.

The major food safety improvements recently were probably for industrialized production, where the issues were often creations of modernity anyway.

OTOH onboard flash freezing equipment for fisheries haven't hurt.

It has been around a while in the west. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steak_tartare gives you some history on raw meat in Europe and America and some jumping off points. Raw liver was the traditional treatment for pernicious anemia.

Quality and freshness of meat is a big concern. You didn't eat raw meat in warm climates before refrigeration, or if you can't source top grade meat uncontaminated by the slaughtering process. And even then you need to inspect for parasites.

There’s also ceviche which is not exactly raw, but not heated either. Seems like the history of that dish goes way back.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2021/05/ceviche-...

Industrial foods with a supply chain have to be extremely careful with raw meat because of the many opportunities for spoilage. If you produce the meat yourself or it is done very locally, you have the opportunity to get it very fresh with many fewer concerns.

The sweet spot for foodbourne illness is industrial scale before rigorous inspections and processes (and refrigeration). That sweet spot fits a lot of people’s grandparents growing up timeframe.

Raw animal products have been consumed forever, what and how are obviously very cultural. During food supply chain industrialization, raw meat became considerably more unsafe and plenty of people were warned.

Now we can get clean food the opportunity to eat raw meat is back and slowly gaining popularity. If you don’t grow up doing it though, there’s a good chance you’ll never be comfortable with it.

It's also that issue of globalisation where a 1 in 10000 rate of severe food poisoning per annum might means there might be an outbreak in a small village once per generation, but in a large country it would make the nightly news regularly.

> My family personally doesn't eat anything raw because of the news reports we've read of people getting sick (or worse) after consuming raw meat, and we make sure to only eat fully cooked meat.

Surely you have access to better sources that say otherwise? You seem to be admitting that you're stuck in your ways and unwilling to try new things because of old or inaccurate news.

Do you also not go to Paris because there was a terrorist act a few years ago?

This isn’t true. I lived in Japan for several years in the 80s and had salmon sushi a few times. It wasn’t popular, but it existed.

It set off nonsense alarms in my head, though I don't have first-hand experience - but I had some ideas on how it could be disproven. I went to archive.org and found a book about fish preparation from 1977. Searching for "sashimi" (raw fish sushi) shows several results, including an entire section about it. This tweeter is full of shit.

https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaoffi0000mccl/page/28...

Salmon. Not raw fish.

Proper source: https://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/441530790/how-the-desperate-n...

TL:DR "Traditionally Japanese do not eat salmon sushi and it was invented in the 80's by the Norwegians to to try to sell more of their over abundance of Salmon."

This page specifically suggests using salmon for sashimi, and doesn't present the idea as particularly novel: https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaoffi0000mccl/page/26...

This is a book about US cuisine?

that's not a japanese source, and tells us nothing about the consumption habit of japan before the 90s

they didn't eat raw salmon because unfrozen salmon has parasites.

aquaculture salmon doesn't have these parasites, likewise deep freezing (as in -20°C for a week or -35°C for a day) makes it safe to eat.

so they knew why they didn't eat raw salmon.

It would be more convincing if that book were in Japanese. After all, the claim is about the popularity of raw salmon sushi in Japan, specifically.

According to a friend of mine who lives in Japan and fits the stereotype "foodie", reality is somewhere in the middle. Farmed Norwegian salmon was indeed seen as a less desirable option for sushi - and apparently still is. According to him, higher end restaurants usually don't serve salmon sushi. He thought the tweet was a bit sensationalistic and pointed to that Norwegian salmon isn't as popular in sushi as the tweet suggests. But there are other ways to prepare fish besides sushi.

Well, for a foodie it probably isn't, a sushi enthusiast is going to be into the terroir of the fish, farm raised salmon is kinda hamfisted in that sense, slight step above a California roll. But that doesn't preclude it from assuming a niche in the convenience food sort of sushi.

yeah I had the same feeling. the way it’s written feels like it’s semi-apocryphal to prove some kind of point about marketing

My favorite salmon fact is that salmon was really common in the West European rivers. They aren't there anymore due to damming, watermills and other industrialization slowing down the rivers causing them to contain more mud and sand rather than rocks.

https://historiek.net/komt-watermolen-deed-nederlandse-zalm-...

I've heard from multiple sources that even some old professions had rules about how often they can be force to eat salmon. For example this source talks about how messengers are protected and are only allowed to eat salmon 2-3 times a week. I've seen similar rules in an old dutch servants cook book.

http://www.gestolengrootmoeder.nl/wordpress/dienstboden-wild...

So fascinating how quickly things change. Only 150 years ago lobster was the food of the poor in the UK.

And in Australia. And chicken was rich person food

And in UK. Back in the sixties, in my fairly well-off bourgeois family, chicken was a rare treat. And even now, not all chicken is cheap; I don't know how much poulet de Bresse costs in France, but it's pretty pricey here.

I'm pretty sure refrigeration played a major role in making fish less of a poor people's food.

As someone who used to live in Japan I can say that Chilean salmon is much more common than Norwegian while it is also cheaper. The higher price of the Norwegian salmon and its packaging which has the character for fresh used before it ( 生 - as opposed to cured with salt) is made to give the impression that it is superior. I don't have the data for this but I think Sushi sold in stores is mostly Chilean too, unless being explicitly tagged as Atlantic in which case again it would be more expensive.

It is often the same Norwegian salmon companies which own the Chilean farms too, but there they don't have to abide by Norway's environmental standards (and I'm pretty sure they lobby to discourage Chile from adopting similar restrictions)

Seems like salmon sushi didn't start at all with Norway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4

This myth was disproven by Andong on YouTube. He found a NYTimes article from 1975 about sushi in Japan that included salmon.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/1k4x9FrD5k4?t=668

Edit: Andong also specifically talks about the Nichirei deal.

Existence and prevalence are not the same thing. Perhaps the title should replace “not eaten” with “not commonly eaten” for maximum accuracy but that doesn’t make it a myth. I’m sure I could find an American restaurant serving squirrel, but I’d still say squirrel is not normally eaten in America.

>I’m sure I could find an American restaurant serving squirrel, but I’d still say squirrel is not normally eaten in America.

Right, but if it's casually being shown on nytimes it's reasonable to infer that it's at least somewhat mainstream?

I'd be curious to see a data viz of map with a time slider at the bottom, and a food item selecter on the left. For a particular food item, you could see how it spread from it's origin to the cuisines of various regions around the world over time.

For instance, noodles from China, or chilis from the Americas.

Apparently (I Read It On The Internet So It Must Be True) you can trace the progress of Scottish traders across the world, by seeing where the local culture starts deep-frying things in batter.

Certainly tempura wasn't a thing in Japan until they traded with the West.

I am pretty sure Project Japan has very little to do with it. Ultimately Salmon Sashimi took off in the East Asia region as well as the Sushi world outside of Japan. And Japan being Japan, took their time to evaluate it due to culture issues.

Here's a YT video from a few months ago that has some additional information:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4

Norway convinced Japan to love salmon sushi (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148527 - April 2022 (112 comments)

How Norway Created Salmon Sushi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10243823 - Sept 2015 (88 comments)

(I thought there had been more of these but couldn't find more)

From the tweets:

> Japan was a natural market for raw fish but Norway had to overcome a few obstacles:

So I interpret that as, eating raw fish in general - the main thing about sushi that takes getting used to for westerners - was common in Japan before and was not introduced by the marketing campaign.

The campaign was specifically about the stigma around raw salmon, not raw fish in general.

And yet you should avoid farmed salmon[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids#Issue...

From your link:

> The US in their dietary guidelines for 2010 recommends eating 8 ounces per week of a variety of seafood and 12 ounces for lactating mothers, with no upper limits set and no restrictions on eating farmed or wild salmon.

? What am I missing?

Keep reading.

For example:

> A recent study in British Columbia links the spread of parasitic sea lice from river salmon farms to wild pink salmon in the same river

If we’re talking food safety, I don’t believe those sea lice are any danger to a consumer. Don’t they just invade the gills of the fish?

I wasn’t talking about food safety.

The lice from the farmed fish devastate the wild salmon populations, so ecologically they are awful.

That to me is a pretty clear reason to avoid farmed salmon.

I’m sorry, I believe the topic was dietary guidelines.

But you’re right, of course, if we should consider the environment as well. I haven’t eaten fish in 8 years, personally, partly because so much of it is fished or farmed in an unsustainable way.

The reference in the link is fairly lengthy. If you go beyond the first paragraph there sections: Disease and parasites, Pollution and contaminants... (about 10 more sections). However under Pollution and contaminants there are some eyebrow raising bits of information. "In sites without adequate currents, heavy metals can accumulate on the benthos (seafloor) near the salmon farms, particularly copper and zinc.[14]

Contaminants are commonly found in the flesh of farmed and wild salmon..."

I am not going down that specific rabbit hole, but your quote does not say anything about not eating farmed salmon specifically compared to wild salmon. All large fish accumulate heavy metals.

Please allow me to quote a passage from an article https://time.com/6199237/is-farmed-salmon-healthy-sustainabl...

> We know that every fish is a trade-off between omega-3 content and toxic content like PCBs. From the perspective of salmon in general, the balance favors consumption of that fish. Now the challenge here is that I can’t tell which salmon is farmed the right way or the wrong way.

Well yeah, that's a better quote, if you want to argue that way.

This depends entirely where (under which rules) they are farmed.

Here in the EU, farmed fish from the Americas comes with the lowest health and safety ratings (and is maybe barely sold because of that), but EU farmed salmon is rated safest, better than wild, especially for babies.

Your country's food regulation body should decide whether a given food source is safe for consumption or not. Never understood why people do these angst runs when they have zero informance on these issues and don't even have the means to decide whether the paranoia is warranted.

Interesting twist to make it a horror-show for foodies when they showed their sushi from university.

I don't get the appeal or raw protein. I tasted it all, raw eggs, raw fish, raw beef and it all just does not taste very good, not as good as the cooked variant.

Agreed though smoked salmon is pretty nice imo.

It's quite literally a matter of taste.

I enjoy these so my perspective:

* raw beef (tartare): the taste of raw beef "makes sense" if you like rare steak. It's a very full umami flavour quite unlike most food.

* sushi: raw salmon on nice sticky rice might as well be beef.. cake. It's buttery, breaks apart in your mouth, sweet without actually being sweet.

* salted pork: very good also, the salt and fat go together well, i usually eat this with something sweet.

* eggs: I don't do raw eggs either.

For reference, I've eaten and prepared a lot of different kinds of meat in my life (smoked, dried, grilled, fried etc.) so eating it raw is only a small leap away.

Cooked salmon, like cooked oyster (without condiments) actually stinks. Only the raw version makes sense.

* raw pork: Mett is pretty popular in Germany and not a fine dining thing (at all). It is IMO best with extra onion.

* raw beef: Filet américain is basically a spicy beef tartare, available in most supermarkets in Belgium and the Netherlands.

I can recommend both of these to carnivores :)

Raw grass carp cut into thin transparent slices: chewy, sweet but not overwhelmingly, with lots of fresh flavors, very good for salad but you should not eat it anyway as it can contain liver fluke

Raw shrimp: crunchy and fresh, not as sweet as fish

Sushi grade raw egg available in my region: the white is smell-less slime with a tiny little bit of taste, the yolk has a mellow sweetness, I can understand why Japanese pair it with rice.

I don't eat eggs by themselves either, but I quite like the raw egg yolks that are often served as a companion to beef tartare.

Where I have (so far) drawn the line is raw tripe, which I've occasionally encountered on the menus of Ethiopian restaurants (I'm a big fan of Kitfo, their take on beef tartare). But I'm not a huge fan of cooked tripe either.

Well I’ve tried raw protein in whiskey sours(raw egg), sushi of various species(raw fish), and beef tartare and laab(raw beef) and enjoyed it all.

I guess the truth is at an impasse given our opposing anecdata.

There's nothing to "get". It's personal taste. What's your comment trying to say?

Agree with you but also find animal protein to be pretty gross in general as well (having some experience with meat production). I can see how it's an acquired taste, though. Was eating/cooking dinner (including fish) with some friends a while back and a friend who is from Japan mentioned "I can't believe you're cooking that fish" which always made me laugh a bit.

I don’t like most raw food I’ve tried, but I do like raw salmon.

Reading articles on Twitter? How about no?

How about yes?

When tweets become "articles" the problem isn't really twitter, but suggests the reader may have trouble correctly describing their process of finding things out.

When reading this twitter thread I was intrigued so I:

- Looked at the export numbers - Asked a couple of friends of mine (one in Japan and one who works in the norwegian salmon industry) - Did a few searches for news coverage about salmon exports to Japan and read a couple of articles while skimming half a dozen more. - Found a master thesis describing "Project Japan" which I've downloaded and will read when I get back from work tonight.

"Reading articles on twitter" isn't a thing.

AI generated Twitter articles that have not been fact checked and published by someone who doesn't know anything about the subject. Yay.

I call bullshit. Raw Atlantic Salmon Sushi was a "thing" in the US since 1975.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/06/archives/food-natural-won...

image in the bottom left is "salmon sashimi"

here's an image of Michael J Fox eating a piece of salmon sushi on the cover of esquire magazine, circa 1988

https://twitter.com/scbaird/status/1294804653755052032

Both of your examples are from the US, and the actual body of the NYT article doesn't mention salmon sushi at all despite mentioning a half dozen or so other fish (as well as salmon roe), which would be unthinkable today. And the latter example is quite late. The headline claim would be stronger if it had "typically" or "often" in it, but the underlying market data seems sound:

> Norway went from selling 2 metric tons of salmon to Japan in 1980 to 28,000 metric tons by 1995.

The picture is literally, "Salmon Sushi" (bottom left quadrant.)

the article above makes it sound like the Norwegians pushed Atlantic salmon on to the the Japanese, and that the first salmon sushi was "invented" by the Norwegians, Which is patently false.

> Up to the 1990s, raw salmon sushi was not eaten in Japan... What changed? Norway went on a 10-year marketing campaign to sell Atlantic salmon in the East Asian country. And the plan worked.

The reason this is relevant?

> At the time, the average Japanese person ate 60kg of fish a year (vs. 15kg globally)

Americans ate sushi in the '70s and '80s, but far less than the Japanese did. The Norwegians wanted to open up the lucrative Japanese market. That is what this story is about. At no point do they claim that the Norwegians invented salmon sushi.

Did you read the same story i did. it says Norway invented it.

Sushi in USA was very different on those details from the beginning. Cooks had to adapt to local food-supply and people's taste. It's the reason why western sushi-forms like the california-roll were created.

The picture is literally sashimi. A raw piece of salmon on rice

Sashimi is literally raw meat WITHOUT rice.

That's still completely irrelevant. The claim is about "food in Japan", not "Japanese food" somewhere else. Your sources are about Japanese food in the USA, which can be different, because of local supply & demand. Ethnical cuisine is often in foreign countries very different served from the original dishes for various reasons.

And BTW sashimi is not sushi. Usually, it would not be put on rice either. The cut and preparation of sashimi and sushi-toppings are different.

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