In Japanese convenience stores and supermarkets, the products sold in Japanese convenience stores and supermarkets can basically see the origin of raw materials and the various additives used on the outer packaging, and some will also indicate the suitable and unsuitable objects, and consumers can decide whether to buy according to the information displayed.
But in most restaurants you can only see what dish is displayed on the menu, and you can't see specific information such as the source of the raw materials. It can be said that consumers consume under unclear circumstances.
Yuji Watanabe, a Japanese writer who pays attention to food safety, wrote such a book, "今いちばん知りたい食べ物の話", which popularizes the phenomenon of "unhealthy" and "unsafe" in many restaurants in Japan and is unknown to ordinary people, such as Japan's very famous rotary sushi...
What you eat in your mouth may not be what you want, maybe it's a substitute!
Yuji Watanabe is a science journalist and author who writes from a consumer perspective in the fields of food, environment, medical treatment, and bioengineering. 曾作書「買ってはいけない', achieved million sales.
In the middle of the "story of the food I want to know the most now", Yuji Watari 2 arrival heavy arrival end sushi shop inside Na insignificant intellectual "inside"!
1, For convenience negitro
* Artificial food made with vegetable oils and colorants
ネギトロ is a material for making sushi. Originally, the "ネギトロ" was made by removing the bones of tuna, using the fat part between the lean meat of the fish and the skin of the fish, and adding green onions, most of which were used to make warship rolls and hand rolls.
First of all, let's briefly talk about what "Zhongluo ち" is.
It refers to the bone-bearing part around the tuna bone, and because it also has fat, it is also delicious, and at the sushi restaurant, the fish meat is removed as a material for making ネギトロ.
These warship rolls and hand rolls are popular dishes at rotary sushi restaurants, sushi takeaways, and convenience stores. But in fact, apart from high-end sushi restaurants, it is rare to actually use "Nakaroku" to make "ネギトロ".
Almost all of them use the cheaper yellowfin tuna and albacore tuna edge fish meat, and even do not use tuna, but use similar taste of red sunfish, and then add fish oil, vegetable oil, seasonings and colorings to make "artificial ネギトロ", and after joining these, the general consumer can not eat the difference, so in various sushi restaurants, convenience stores selling is still hot.
2. Star eel sushi
*Substitute is sea snake
Star eels are 30 cm to 60 cm long, shaped like river eels, with white and tender flesh and a lot of fat, making it a good fish to eat.
In the impression and perception of many Japanese people, the consumption of star eels began in the pre-Edo era, because overfishing has made the price of real star eels high.
As a result, in many rotary sushi restaurants, a giant sea snake from South America is used as a substitute for star eels.
Some shops will use 10cm diameter, body length of 1.5m ~ 2m kangji eel to replace the star eel, kangji eel has a lot of fat, and the lipid is not as good as the star eel, if not handled properly, it will cause abdominal pain and diarrhea.
The authors say that if it were not for some unscrupulous merchants, the eels might never have hit the table. But today there are also kangji eels in supermarkets.
3. The color of salmon
* Artificially dyed?
Salmon, regardless of age and season is a very popular fish, orange fish meat also looks pleasing to the eye, appetite is great.
In Japan, there are three main sources of salmon on the market, one is from Japan, the second is from Chile, and the third is from Norway. These three places are now the most mainstream salmon producing areas in Japan.
However, in order to ensure that the salmon does not die during transportation, drugs such as antibiotics are thrown into the salmon, and some also add hormones to the feed in order to make the fish grow up quickly.
Also, the beautiful orange color of salmon may also be the chemicals containing "cantharidin" and "astaxanthin" mixed into the feed to feed salmon. In particular, cantharidin, although this artificial pigment can be used for feed use, studies in recent years have shown that the human body can accumulate on the retina after absorbing cankerglobin, resulting in vision loss.
4. Ingredients for rotary sushi
*The number of substitutes is very large
The author said that in addition to the "substitute fish" mentioned in the previous article, there are many cases of "shoddy" and "selling dog meat with sheep's head", and most of the substitutes are imported fish and deep-sea fish that are not very popular in Japan.
For example, the true seabream is replaced by wuguo fish, the perch is replaced by Nile perch, the squid is replaced by flounder, the hairy cockle is replaced by red shellfish, the narrow-scaled flounder is replaced by the fin flesh of flounder, and so on.
Everyone says that Japan's food safety and food quality are very reassuring, which is indeed true, looking at the entire environment in Japan, food safety is indeed very good.
But every country will have a group of mercenary intentions, these only to make money and regardless of consumer health and rights of businesses hope to catch one and fine to change!
I hope that when each of us travels to Japan, if possible, try to choose a more famous or local recommended shop to go to dinner, one is to taste the most authentic Japanese food, so that their money is not unjustly spent; the second is to eat healthy, eat at ease!
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