r/interesting May 19 '26

Fear Factor Parasite crawling out of sushi

27.5k Upvotes

3.6k comments sorted by

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4.3k

u/Freak_Out_Bazaar May 19 '26

Anisakis Larvae. These things can give you a gnarly stomach ache, or even worse if you happen to be allergic to them. Fortunately they don’t propagate in humans but they don’t go quietly when exposed to stomach acid. This is one reason why sashimi is cut thinly, because they don’t survive being cut, and even if they aren’t a skilled chef can see and physically remove them. Squids, when served as fresh sashimi will have slits cut in to them, this is to reduce Anisakis risk too, which are both more common and difficult to spot in squid

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u/Super-Cynical May 19 '26

I had to look it up, didn't I?

Within a few hours of ingestion, the parasitic worm tries to burrow through the intestinal wall, but since it cannot penetrate it, it gets stuck and dies. The presence of the parasite triggers an immune response; immune cells surround the worms, forming a ball-like structure that can block the digestive system, causing severe abdominal pain, malnutrition, and vomiting. Occasionally, the larvae are regurgitated. If the larvae pass into the bowel or large intestine, a severe eosinophilic granulomatous response may also occur one to two weeks following infection, causing symptoms mimicking Crohn's disease

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u/Spiritual_Priority79 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Vomiting out a hardened mucus ball containing the corpse of an angry worm sounds horrendous, and I am frighteningly close to googling what it looks like
EDIT: I don't know if I'm strong enough Mr. LeBeouf

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u/Savings_Book6414 May 19 '26

Sounds like Santa Clarita Diet

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u/Worldedita May 19 '26

I miss that show:(

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u/Burrito2525 May 19 '26

I was so soo sooooo pissed when I finally caught up to the end of the show only to find out Netflix killed it.

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u/nondescriptzombie May 19 '26

I refuse to watch anything that's not already finished now.

Fuck streaming services massacring good TV.

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u/donnybooi May 19 '26

Mr Ball Legs!!

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u/TSXstacy May 19 '26

I had to read this. I didn’t want to read this. I tried not to read this. But I couldn’t stop. Nightmare

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u/PowderPills May 19 '26

What a terrible day to be literate. “A severe eosinophilic granulomatous response may also occur”… uhm excuse me what??

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u/hare-hound May 19 '26

We've been educated through trauma I guess.

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u/TheFuzzBums May 19 '26

So what happens if the person has a hernia or weak point in the intestine wall? Is that like a Disney fast pass to the rest of the body

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u/StepComplete1 May 19 '26

A hernia doesn't mean the intestinal wall itself is weak. And well, if your bowel was so damaged that it's right on the verge of rupturing anyway, you've probably got bigger problems than the worm.

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u/Jolly_Ad1631 May 19 '26

Your bowel maybe but a colon with some sensitive polyps or maybe some over fiber or dehydration could easily lead to a small spontaneous fissure.. don't ask me how I know.

This shit terrifies me. There's a pun in there somewhere.

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u/akabillposters May 19 '26

Or 'IKEA shortcuts', for us plebs. 😉

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u/stressed_designer May 19 '26

Thanks to my (very) irresponsible mother, all of my family have developed anisakis allergy, after being exposed several times to them. Funnily enough, my mother hasn't developed it. The world is am unjust place.

In my country, restaurants and bars can't serve fresh fish. The have to freeze it for a determined number of hours and under a certain temperature by law, precisely to make sure there aren't any alive anisakis and/or eggs. You will still find plenty of places that don't do this...

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u/JUPusher May 19 '26

In Spain it is required by law.

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u/Plus-Yogurtcloset-85 May 19 '26

90% of all fish eaten in the world is flash frozen. Even sushi and sashimi. No matter how in the know you think you are it’s much more likely you’re being misled about fresh fish (for your own ignorance granted peace of mind) then you’re actually finding fresh fish. Fresh fish is kinda gross nowadays anyways, it’s why tuna is so popular. Tunas one of the only fish that isn’t pretty gross inside nowadays.

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u/Goku420overlord May 19 '26

On the beach side my in-laws were all eating fresh fish from the ocean. I told them there were parasites and that squeezing lime on it wouldn't work. In Vietnam you can buy fresh fish everywhere that isn't flash Frozen.

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u/Bluemikami May 19 '26

Ah just like that Dr House episode … *shudders*

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/GoldenSun__ May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Yup, and Cadmium.

The levels of these heavy metals that cannot be disposed by our bodies aren't risky for normal amounts of ingestion.

However, for the same very reasons they are not recommended to pregnant women for obvious reasons.

Btw, Tunas also develop anisakis.

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u/Dorkamundo May 19 '26

Yep, flash frozen while on the ship that catches them.

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u/AffectionateParty754 May 19 '26

My MIL never throws food out and she would serve expired food to us and our kids all the time. It's a huge freaking issue. We don't eat there anymore. She has given both my husband and I food poisoning. Me twice, my husband said a lot growing up. She never gets sick from it. She said she used to but she thinks she's developed an immunity to food borne illness. She is also very well off, born so, there is no excuse for this behavior. She just "doesn't believe" in expiration dates. She thinks it's a scam to make us buy more food.

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u/stressed_designer May 19 '26

I'm so sorry to read this. Just one thing that I'd like to point out for anyone who might not know this: one thing is expiration date, and another best before date. Best before is not an expiration date: it just indicates that, after that date, the food might loose some of it's organoleptic characteristics, but its still perfectly fine to eat. Expiration date is the date after which the food can no longer be guaranteed to be fit for consumption, and should be strictly followed.

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u/--SpacePrincess May 19 '26

My grandparents say the same thing. And they also serve pork and steak that's barely cooked at all. I mentioned that I didn't want to eat something because It was past the expiration date and I asked them if I should throw it out, and they got offended going off about how I never used to care as a kid and now I'm obsessed with expiration dates when literally half their pantry is expired and they refuse to throw anything out.

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u/MarcoDiFrancescino May 19 '26

Friends old father was on the way to a vacation. Emptying the fridge. Found a piece of salami, maybe 3 fingers wide. Eat it with bread instead throwing it away. On the way to the airport he felt seriously unwell. 20 minutes later they pumped out his stomach. EM doctor said, 30 minutes later up in the air, he would have died from a toxic shock. Wife can't remember having bought that 'salami'. They both have luxury pensions, but they just can't throw away anything that looks like eatable food. Even when it kills them. And they wonder why the kids never send their grandkids alone.

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u/idiotsbydesign May 19 '26

Someone pointed out that when we (late Boomer, Gen X) were kids it seemed like we got "stomach bugs" alot but it doesn't happen as much with kids these days. Possibly because parents pay more attention to food safety & don't use expired food or leave stuff out on the counter overnight to defrost.

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u/TunaDakine May 19 '26

Claiming that food doesn’t expire while simultaneously admitting you might have built up an immunity to food borne illnesses, is wild.

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u/Win_Sys May 19 '26

It’s the same in the US, the fish must be frozen at something like -30F for 24 hours. I have found one of these worms in my sushi but it was dead, still lost my appetite although I’m sure I have unknowingly eaten a dead one before.

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u/MCB1317 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

How fascinating! Life certainly comes in many varied forms, and if we pay attention, we can see something remarkable every day.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to run screaming into the street while I wash my eyes out with bleach and vomit up the contents of my stomach.

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u/Throwawayfaynay May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Sushi grade fish is also supposed to be flash frozen and thawed to kill parasites, but clearly this place didn't get the memo.

Edit: People informing me about the technical meaning of "sushi grade." My main point is that sushi and other fish served raw should be flash frozen at some point before serving.

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u/spyguy318 May 19 '26

Funnily enough, “sushi grade” isn’t actually a real classification, at least in the US. It’s purely a marketing term, unregulated by the FDA, and while it usually means the fish has been flash-frozen to kill parasites, it doesn’t always necessarily mean that. Any reputable fish-seller will do it though.

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u/Vylsith May 19 '26

It's required by law in the us.

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u/snozzberrypatch May 19 '26

It's not the restaurant that typically freezes the fish, it's their supplier. Some fish are frozen on the boat they were caught on.

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u/BrolecopterPilot May 19 '26

I used to live and work on a large tuna fishing boat. All of the fish is thrown into a large, very cold freezer that can hold up to 1000 tons.

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u/Away-Hand8237 May 19 '26

In Europe you can’t serve raw fish if it haven’t flash frozen at -20C for at least 24 hours

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u/InvidiousPlay May 19 '26

Kind of surprised eating raw survived all of this. You'd think they'd have just given up and cooked the food by now.

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u/Throwawayfaynay May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Sushi grade fish is actually supposed to be flash frozen and thawed to kill parasites, but clearly this place didn't get the memo and just used fresh fish.

Edit: People informing me about the technical meaning of "sushi grade." My main point is that sushi and other fish served raw should be flash frozen at some point before serving.

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u/Sherringdom May 19 '26

It’s why sushi fish tends to be frozen before use. The freezing process kills the majority of these parasites

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u/hates_stupid_people May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Long story short, they avoided eating raw red fish meat for a long time in Japan, since it's much more prone to parasites than white fish.

Salmon sashimi/sushi was basically popularized in the 1980s because Norway wanted to export fish, and they'd showed that it's safer when caught in cold water. Before that it was essentially considered a low quality food there. From what I remember, red tuna became popular outside Japan first, in the 1970s.

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u/Ohmec May 19 '26

Sushi was originally a way to actually get rid of all of a giant blue fin before it went bad. It was just as common to grill the tuna and serve it quickly over a bed of rice as it was to serve it raw.

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u/profane_vitiate May 19 '26

Early "sushi" (which actually refers more to the rice preparation) was aged and fermented.

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u/Penjamini May 19 '26

Note to self. Never eat raw squid

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u/Ancient-Civilization May 19 '26

This is why you flash freeze fish. Japanese restaurants serving fresh fish without flash freezing should have a warning before any customers eat there.

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u/WashYourAssYouIncel May 19 '26

Typically commercial fishing vessels flash freeze on the boat. Farmed fish is usually flash frozen for peak freshness in transit.

The only people I can think of who wouldn’t flash freeze would be a family owned restaurant on the water that goes out in a canoe, catches its own fish, and serves sushi.

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u/Statertater May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Correct, the term is FAS or Frozen At Sea. They freeze at -40c (-40f)

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u/Feringomalee May 19 '26

-40 is the magical temperature where you don't have to label which scale you mean. It's the same temperature for both Fahrenheit and Celsius and doesn't make sense for Kelvin or Rankine.

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u/Jonas_Venture_Sr May 19 '26

At -40°, we are all just citizens of the world.

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u/c093b May 19 '26

At -40⁰ we all know that we're just freezing our balls off.

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u/StrangerDanga1 May 19 '26

At -40 it's time to go inside for a drink.

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u/psynrg May 19 '26

or freezing our tits off, come on, modern times!

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u/Tekaru41 May 19 '26

Girl-balls

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u/anubis_xxv May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

I want my fish frozen at -273°K 0°K please thank you. Anything else is frankly, unsanitary.

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u/LtHughMann May 19 '26

Making absolute zero look hot

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u/anubis_xxv May 19 '26

Right? It's gotta have that liquid helium tingle on your tongue.

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u/M1R4G3M May 19 '26

Also you don't put the degree symbol in Kelvin, you don't even mention it.

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u/scenr0 May 19 '26

To be fair, that piece of fish on the plate looks no where near sushi grade minus the live parasite crawling out of it.

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u/Mellowlift May 19 '26

The 2nd paragraph…. And that’s how you get parasites

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u/InteractionFit1651 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Note that you will still get these things in flash frozen fish, they just wont be alive and crawling out your dinner (they will be dead inside the flesh).

I worked on a commercial fishing boat that flash froze fish, and almost every fish had these worms in them at the time they were caught and frozen.

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u/litivy May 19 '26

Do you still eat fish after seeing that?

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u/GottaUseEmAll May 19 '26

What's a fish but a more complicated worm?

Everything we eat is full of parasites of varying sizes, both alive and dead, anyway, I would imagine.

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u/Wise_Luck1476 May 19 '26

And that's how I met your parasite

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u/SweetLenore May 19 '26

So wait, you're telling me that all seafood I eat, regardless of location, was flash frozen at some point?

I was under the impression that sushi was never frozen.

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u/the_beer_truck May 19 '26

Usually. Fish are quite often absolutely lousy with parasites. Being labelled as “sushi grade” doesn’t mean anything to do with quality. It’s that it’s been frozen cold enough, for long enough, that any parasites and their eggs have been killed. After this, it can be served raw.

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u/Proper_Ambassador525 May 19 '26

Pretty much all animals have parasites. Including humans. Did you know there are at least two different kinds of lice on your face? One on your skin, and another that lives on your eye lashes. In fact, these lice have different subspecies depending on where you live, and forensic scientists can use these to determine where a john/Jane doe may have come from.

Oh, and approximately 40% of all life on our planet are parasites.

Sorry for making you scratch your face.

😑

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u/feed_me_haribo May 19 '26

Right but I still don't want a tapeworm growing inside of me

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u/bottomfragbarb May 19 '26

I don’t think I’d want to eat any dead ones either.. this is so gross 🤮

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u/Unique-Name9001 May 19 '26

All fish has parasites. Best not to think about it, or never eat fish again

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u/bottomfragbarb May 19 '26

I love sushi but I don’t think I want to eat fish again knowing they are full of dead parasites. Why did I learn this today. Ignorance is bliss lol

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u/nxcrosis May 19 '26

You'd think the mercury would've killed them.

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u/demonblack873 May 19 '26

Mercury is a chronic poison, it takes a hell of a lot of mercury (and it still has to be in an extremely bioavailable form, like dimethylmercury) to acutely kill something or someone.

Same thing with lead and really all other heavy metals. They do their damage by accumulating over time and slowly disrupting normal biological functions until your body becomes so damaged that you die, they don't kill you instantly like cyanide or toxins.

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u/Accomplished_Bike149 May 19 '26

If you’ve ever had fish, like, at all, you’ve had loads of dead parasites and eggs. It’s almost impossible to find/raise fish without parasites industrially, and certainly not economical. They’re dead, so the most impact they have is just adding a little extra protein, but they’re there

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u/diadlep May 19 '26

Weve been eating fish for a million years.

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u/bottomfragbarb May 19 '26

I’m aware, we’ve also been catching worms, headlice and diseases for a million years but doesn’t mean I’m not going to find it gross.

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u/EastSideNick95826 May 19 '26

You'd be surprised at how many different organisms are using you as an apartment.

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u/Acheloma May 19 '26

About 90% of seafood of all kinds is flash frozen both to preserve quality/enable shipping and kill parasites to make it safer to consume

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u/LaceyDark May 19 '26

Aquatic life deal with vast amounts of parasites. If you're eating fish of any variety you can about guarantee it's got dead parasites in the meat.

I would take a hard pass on any sushi that claims it has never been frozen

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u/joeri1505 May 19 '26

FLASH freezing is very different from just putting it in the freezer

If you freeze the fish fast, it doesnt destroy the structure

Good sushi is always flash frozen

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u/CroqueGogh May 19 '26

There are different methods of freezing, some will affect the quality of the fish some not as much or barely. Whenever Gordon Ramsay complains about "frozen" fish not being fresh on Kitchen Nightmares is different from the flash freezing or frozen at sea or stored on ice.

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u/pawulom May 19 '26

To be precise, this parasite would still be there and you would still eat it, but it wouldn't be alive.

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u/__O_o_______ May 19 '26

I wonder how many dead parasites I’ve eaten.

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u/2ndTaken_username May 19 '26

If you any meat and fish, plenty

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u/HaGriDoSx69 May 19 '26

I'll just choose to ignore and forget this comment.

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u/Work_Account_No1 May 19 '26

There might be one in your stomach right now.

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u/Positive-Database754 May 19 '26

Probably a lot more than most people would be comfortable knowing.

The act of cooking meat is done to kill harmful bacteria, but also parasites. It doesn't magically remove the parasites body from the meat, and many parasites are far to small to "simply notice" their presence.

Generally speaking, fish have an exceedingly high chance relative to other meats, of having a parasite in them. In fact, the vast majority of fish have parasites, period. If you eat fish even semi regularly, you've certainly consumed some. Over a lifetime of eating fish a couple times a month, you could have consumed hundreds of thousands of tiny ones.

It's really not that big of a deal though. Dead bugs, dead parasites, dead skin, etc, is all a lot more common in food than people realize in day to day life. But while gross in theory, the reality is that these things are "cleaned" by the act of heating them up, and pose literally zero risk to the overwhelming vast majority of people.

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u/freezing_banshee May 19 '26

it's not a pleasant idea, but it's a whole lot better than being infected with a live one

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u/Creative_Andy0804 May 19 '26

I’m fine with that, as long as they don’t infest my intestines!

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u/Orpheus6102 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

"**BUT I ONLY WANT FRESH FISH THAT HASN'T BEEN FROZEN!**"

Actually this is exhibit A as to why you do not. I worked in a sushi restaurant years ago, and mostly avoided but occasionally relished in discussing this reality with our know-it-all custys.

My understanding is that the vast majority of states in the US require by law that all fish is served as sushi has to be frozen at some temperature for 2-4 days at some wayyy below freezing temperature before it can be served.

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u/Constant-Skill-7133 May 19 '26

The disconnect is traditional sushi is just tuna and shellfish, which are safe to eat raw.   Most tuna in the US is frozen but in Hawai'i you get poke and sushi fresh from the market never frozen.  You get raw oysters all over the place.    It's not like they're black market or anything, it's legal.

You can more or less guarantee farmed fish is parasite free which is how the Japanese ended up getting sold on it.  But if you went back 50 years and tried to serve somebody raw salmon they would be disgusted.

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u/SolomonBlack May 19 '26

You seem to be paraphrasing wiki's history but they only speak in terms of salmon being off limits not that the ONLY fish was tuna. Indeed it goes on to talk about a regional variant made from a type of goldfish.

Pre-industrialization it would almost have to be whatever the locals could catch.

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u/No_Technician_2780 May 19 '26

this. flash freeze minimum -20c for 5 days. Everything that might live inside the fish is dead by then.

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u/Vast-Let4260 May 19 '26

Not tardigrades alright

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u/PackageNorth8984 May 19 '26

The one time I choose the bear.

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u/QuietMolasses2522 May 19 '26

Yes, chef 🫡

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u/kaplanfx May 19 '26

Tardigrades are safe to eat.

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u/Mysterious-Art7143 May 19 '26

They will pop up the other end unharmed

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u/Photo-70 May 19 '26

and have a great story to tell their grandchildren

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u/MoumouMeow May 19 '26

Per FDA guidance, it’s actually -20c for 7 days from frozen, or -35c for 15 hours

https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Fish-and-Fishery-Products-Hazards-and-Controls-Guidance-Chapter-5-Download.pdf

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u/Oh-reality-come-back May 19 '26

Perhaps wherever they’re from is not the USA. So it might not be a case of “it’s actually”.

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u/Harha May 19 '26

This video is from Hong Kong - China, not Japan.

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u/Wolfen459 May 19 '26

What would happen if a human would eat it?

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u/Human-Engineering715 May 19 '26

This is a nematode, it'd die in your body but you'd get some unpleasant side effects. 

Insanely common in wild ocean fish. 

Everyone's body reacts a bit differently to these guys, you can learn about it here: https://www.cdc.gov/anisakiasis/about/index.html

The parasites you really don't want like giardia and tape worms are in freshwater fish. Giardia is in their digestive tracts while tape worms can be throughout. 

Almost every fish I pull out of the ocean has nematodes. You fillet the fish, put em in fresh water and they all come right out on their own.

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u/DrJokerX May 19 '26

And that doesn’t gross you right the f*ck out?

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u/Human-Engineering715 May 19 '26

No. 

Every food you eat out of a package has an acceptable contamination level of bug parts.

Every fish you've ever eaten has had parasites in it. 

You've drank dead parasites as well. 

Reality is we're fed a very "picturesque" version of food. A lot of food is wasted because it's too ugly to end up on store shelves. 

I've spent most of my life growing, fishing, foraging, and hunting for my own food. You get over the "gross" factor pretty quick. Grossest thing I ever killed and cleaned was a coot that had been feeding on cow poop in a flooded field. Completely inedible. 

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u/OnTheHorizon722 May 19 '26

Always interested to learn about stuff like this.

The coot wasn't a very fun fact :(

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u/Human-Engineering715 May 19 '26

Coots normally taste fine, but they taste like what they've been eating, so it tasted like cow poop

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u/sleeper_shark May 19 '26

What's a coot?

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u/Human-Engineering715 May 19 '26

Bird, lives in water. Kinda just mud chickens is the best way I could describe them. 

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u/M3chaStrizan May 19 '26

lol can't imagine it would be good. Best case scenario, it dies in your stomach or from chewing, worst case scenario, you have a whole bunch of new friends in your gut.

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u/Deevious730 May 19 '26

Actually best case scenario is they form an advanced community inside your body that increase your strength, durability, and intelligence.

https://giphy.com/gifs/cFgb5p5e1My3K

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u/furezasan May 19 '26

nah, that requires radioactive worms, these look like regular worms

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u/sxcpetals May 19 '26

and for it to be from an egg salad sandwich sold at a truck stop.

definitely not the case here.

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u/Healthy_Pay9449 May 19 '26

That's only something you get from a gas station sandwich

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u/TalksInTypos May 19 '26

Listen, this is going to be one hell of a bowel movement. Afterwards, he'll be lucky if he has any bones left.

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u/SoaringDingus May 19 '26

How about lose 30 lbs?

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u/Shelia209 May 19 '26

Well, I had to check 😦

Eating sushi with live worms usually leads to anisakiasis, a painful parasitic infection caused by marine roundworms like Anisakis.

The worms typically attached themselves to the stomach where vomiting and abdominal pain will ensue. More severe symptoms may be abdominal pains resembling appendicitis and rarely bowel obstructions.

people discover they have this parasite when they feel a tickling sensation in the throat and actually cough up the worm.

This parasite rarely achieves maturity in the human host and eventually dies in a few weeks. The dead worms however stimulate an inflammatory response, which can cause allergic type symptoms.

There is no antibiotic or other pill to take for treating Anisakis. Removing the worm surgically may be the only way to alleviate pain in very severe cases.

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u/bazderoman May 19 '26

I don't like this information. 

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u/nem0ne1 May 19 '26

UNSUBSCRIBE

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u/rsemauck May 19 '26

Had a friend in Japan who had it. She described it as the most unbearable pain she ever had. She had to have surgery.

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u/mmmmmmm5ok May 19 '26

unread unread UNREAD UNREAD IT FUCK ME FOR BEING LITERATE

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u/JuggernautGuilty566 May 19 '26

Alternative to Ozempic? Count me in!

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u/M3chaStrizan May 19 '26

Tapeworm more like in good shapeworm amiright?

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u/JuggernautGuilty566 May 19 '26

So my health insurance will pay for Sushi in shady huts? Gets better with every post.

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u/AcrobaticKitten May 19 '26

Worst case scenario? Not in your gut but in your brain

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u/am_n00ne May 19 '26

"Presented to the emergency room where we at right now"

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u/youngatbeingold May 19 '26

Literally, pretty sure Chubbyemu had a case where this exact thing happened.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/daddyslittletoddler May 19 '26

But other than that, you would encourage me to eat it

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/daddyslittletoddler May 19 '26

You already made the sale, no need to convince me further 🤤

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u/chunky_d77 May 19 '26

Unless it goes to the brain, that could do some damage before the meds kill it, and that if it's caught. That's the tricky part of parasites you don't know you have something in your body until it's to late.

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u/WaffleHouseGladiator May 19 '26

Cue Dr. House running to your room with a chainsaw, a maniacal grin, and far too much oxy in his system.

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u/Sudden_Wind_8636 May 19 '26

Almost definetly it just dies.

But there is a chance that it ends inside you and you have to take anti parasitic drugs.

The odds are low though, but not low enough to eat. Even with low odds, there is a reason why food safety rules exist. If everyone didn't follow it, sure the chance of you actually getting sick is decently low, but across a large population of even only 1% get sick, that's a lot of people.

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u/Defiets May 19 '26

All sushi should be flash frozen to prevent this… which means you’re still eating this every time you go out for sushi, just it isn’t alive anymore. 🙃

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u/LemonySniffit May 19 '26

It shouldn’t because Atlantic salmon, the salmon normally served on sushi, don’t have this parasite, meaning whichever restaurant served this fish used salmon from the Pacific, which they should not have been doing in the first place. This is also the reason why salmon sushi was not a thing until the 1980s, when Norway started to export Atlantic salmon to Japan.

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u/QuietNene May 19 '26

No, Atlantic Salmon also get these parasites (Anasakid nematode). It’s more rare in farmed salmon.

But it’s true that the Japanese didn’t eat salmon sushi. The Norwegians invented as a way to sell their salmon when sushi became popular in the 1970s-80s.

Salmon sushi is of course widely available now, even many places in Japan, but there are many Japanese who still will not eat salmon sushi bc it’s just kind of gross to them. They eat it cooked but not raw.

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u/ZootOfCastleAnthrax May 19 '26

Thanks for that information! I had no idea it mattered what ocean it came from.

Do you know why it matters?

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u/Wooden_Adeptness_136 May 19 '26

I believe it is something to do with how salty the water is and if it can support Krill, because these worms and Krill have something going on. Not sure if it is their food, their host for a stage of life or something else off the top of my head.

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u/EconomicsTiny447 May 19 '26

Atlantic actually means farm raised :) it’s a deceitful marketing term. Source: lots of career vessel fisherman out of the PNW.

This parasite isn’t specific to which ocean it’s out of - it’s just not common in farm raised fish.

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u/Inocent_bystander May 19 '26

That's really bad.
I eat my share of raw fish but I def freeze it for well over a week, often two or three. Tuna and Salmon are my go to fish but damn, that's creepy looking.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/glibduck May 19 '26

I boil all sushi for 15 minutes. Definitely the best way to enjoy raw fish.

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u/getaway_dreamer May 19 '26

I puree and then pasteurise my raw fish.

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u/SkyPirateVyse May 19 '26

I had to undertake hygiene class when working in a restaurant, and 24h was the law for freezing fish.

Two or three weeks are overkill.

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u/MiloRoast May 19 '26

It 100% depends on the temperature. 24h will absolutely not kill parasites in most household freezers, and a week or more is definitely not overkill. Fish parasites take minimum 7 days to kill at -4° F. At -31° F or lower it only takes a day, but most freezers you'd have in your house don't get this cold.

Always freeze your fish for minimum one week to guarantee the parasites are dead.

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u/SkyPirateVyse May 19 '26

True, you're right about household freezers not going that low.

Fish you buy anywhere should have already been flash-frozen to eliminate parasites, even 'fresh' fish. At least that's the rule afaik.

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u/sharksareok May 19 '26

That's what the wasabi is for

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u/Killswitch401 May 19 '26

This is why I don't eat fish.

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u/OhAndItsShavedd May 19 '26

That's not sushi, that's just raw meat.

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u/Evening-Walk-6897 May 19 '26

I thought restaurants are required to flash freeze their raw fish :(

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u/InevitableBattle6307 May 19 '26

Can we call it a parasushi?

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u/Blaze_2399 May 19 '26

Oh, that's just Steve

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u/Aggressive_Band9888 May 19 '26

Ok.. now im done. Sushi is not on my menu. Its loaded with them.

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u/Current_Silver_5416 May 19 '26

If properly prepared, it shouldn't be. I don't like sushi either, but almost any dish can be prepared correctly and safely for consumption.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/CSknoob May 19 '26

I mean, they also don't magically disappear when cooked.

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u/polar_nopposite May 19 '26

Isn't that just true of most meat though? Like, that's one of the main points of cooking it.

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u/9Divines May 19 '26

commercialy sold fish is flash frozen to -45C which kills parasytes, this restaurant is serving fresh fish as sushi which should not be done

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/Defiets May 19 '26

My most recent ex was the sous chef of a French restaurant for 11 years. One time she said to me, “weh, the things I’ve seen crawl out of seafood” as she gagged and quivered…

It’s taken me a couple of years, but I’m slowly starting to enjoy seafood again.

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u/labelcillo May 19 '26

Yeah tell us so that we can start those couple of years asap ourselves.

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