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> Similarly, you can eat raw fish (if you don't worry about parasites), but you pretty much want to eat them right out of the water. As soon as you cut it and l

> Similarly, you can eat raw fish (if you don't worry about parasites), but you pretty much want to eat them right out of the water. As soon as you cut it and leave it alone for a while, it can start to go off. Raw fish used in sushi/sashimi is often butchered properly to prevent the fish's muscles from producing lactic acid (see ikijime), and then aged for flavour: https://medium.com/torodex/the-sushi-you-eat-isnt-fresh-f3478c99eb2 https://medium.com/torodex/the-sushi-you-eat-isnt-fresh-f347...

mikekchar 7y ago
Crucially, it is not aged at room temperature ;-). The original discussion was talking about the idea that technology has been used by humans to process and preserve fresh meat, making it more of a staple than it would have been thousands of years ago. Arguing that technology will allow you to age fresh fish, is kind of circular :-) Before the ready availability of ice, unsalted and unvinegared sea fish was very much a rarity if you were more than a days travel away from the sea in Japan. Originally sushi started as picked fish. Then they got the idea to make blocks of pickled fish and picked rice (you can still buy this kind of sushi today in Japan). It really has only been in the last 150 years or so that sushi included raw, unprocessed fish, and only quite recently that it would have been available far away from the sea side. Edit: I should qualify this as being in Honshu. I believe the Ainu people were eating raw fish for a long time - in the winter months, of course.