7 ms·

I am a Japanese resident. I am not sure how the local people will react to it commercially. So much of the homestyled food goes with traditional cookware. Peopl

I am a Japanese resident. I am not sure how the local people will react to it commercially. So much of the homestyled food goes with traditional cookware. People always are curious to try out things like this - but fall back to age-old practices. I won't be surprised if people continue using their wooden or ceramic chopsticks and this thing becomes a novelty item in upscale department stores. Consider smoked and deep fried food items. Universally, we have evidence they are connected to cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Or that raw uncooked meat could be risky. Yet, the sashimi, basashi, tempura, and various grilled item food industry is going strong. Educated Japanese understand the risks but it is their way of life - and healthcare has presumably evolved to take care of the sporadic incidents well enough. This country does emphasize on good health and longevity. Such risks from sodium get downplayed easily. Japan has a high inertia for sometimes good and sometimes not-so-good. But leaving aside this new invention, there is much scope to have even healthier food and lifestyles.

mmastrac 5y ago
> sashimi I'm cherry picking one thing from your great comment, but is it really risky? If properly frozen, fish is perfectly safe to consume.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jjulius 5y ago
  >If properly frozen... That's the important part - there's risk if the fish isn't processed or handled correctly.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Isn't that true of literally everything though? Raw vegetables are not safe to eat unless washed properly, cooked meat isn't safe to eat unless cooked properly, raw meat isn't safe to eat unless handled properly, damn even something as simple as garlic oil isn't safe to eat unless you know exactly how it was prepared and stored. I have no idea if the risk with sashimi is any greater than with other things, but I'd guess not?
    - postingposts 5y ago
      It is true, BUT, (and this is a big but, almost a baby got back but) the risk is not the same for improperly handled vegetables vs. meats or seafood. Poorly handled veggies generally will give you E. Coli, or a similar sort of nasty stomach/food illness. Bad seafood can give you parasites. It’s like the risk of surfing vs. the risk of driving a wave-runner. Both can injure you on the water but a bad wave-runner accident might kill you.
      - cogman10 5y ago
        Bad seafoods can also give you a bunch of other bacterial infections. Meat, and in particular fish meat, is a breading ground for all sorts of bacteria. After washing a carrot, it stays safe to eat for hours at room temp. Fruits can stay safe to eat for days. Fish, on the other hand, goes bad in about 2 hours when it's cooked. Much faster when it's raw.
    - ryanbrunner 5y ago
      Sushi (with fish) and sashimi are usually on the list of foods to avoid for high risk people along with raw meats, cold deli meats, runny or raw eggs, etc. Those are usually a little overcautious, but I think it's safe to say there's more risk with fish than with eating a raw vegetable.
- srvmshr 5y ago
  Sashimi is a bit risky if the fish has been sliced for a while, and the temperature isn't as low as it should be. It quickly loses its texture. I personally avoid it in such cases & hence only use a handful of brick & mortar joints who I know personally. Good quality, fresh sashimi can be very expensive. I had few pieces (2-4) of bluefin tuna last week & it set me back by ~$70. Issues are few but then the majority of worms & food poisoning cases are from the chain sushi/sashimi joints, where the items are just placed-replaced several times on the conveyor or the fish has been in the open to quickly serve incoming orders. They are affordable to have regularly but I will not recommend. Japan is generally very safe about food quality, but sometimes dark pockets do exist in food industry nevertheless. (P.S: If any of you are traveling to Tokyo in future, I will be happy to recommend specific places which might interest your tastes. My email is in my bio)
01100011 5y ago
Exactly. I just posted this in another thread. It's a study on the link between high sodium intake(i.e. pickled foods like kimchi) and stomach cancer(5th most common cancer): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.801228/full#:~:text=The%20findings%20of%20this%20study,processed%20meat%20intakes%20were%20not https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.80122... I don't expect Koreans to stop eating kimchi anytime soon.
- andreareina 5y ago
  The effect size is also tiny in absolute numbers. With a base rate of 0.004 and a relative risk of 1.28 it would take what, 1000 people reducing their intake to prevent one case of cancer?
  - drekk 5y ago
    In a population of 300 million, like the US, that's 300,000 prevented cancer cases. We reported about 5x as many new cases last year. I'm not saying we should mandate reduced sodium intake or anything, but having the ability to reduce cancer incidence by 20% is huge. Not just in terms of raw economics, but the societal impact of not losing grandma or grandpa unnecessarily is something we can't easily quantify. I doubt anyone in the US in the 90s expected smoking rates to drop the way they did, but it is possible to discourage unhealthy behaviors that have externalized costs, like smoking tobacco or eating garbage.
Johnny555 5y ago
Consider smoked and deep fried food items. Universally, we have evidence they are connected to cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Or that raw uncooked meat could be risky. Yet, the sashimi, basashi, tempura, and various grilled item food industry is going strong. Educated Japanese understand the risks but it is their way of life... Such risks from sodium get downplayed easily I'm not sure that anyone really understands the risks, and certainly not my 84 year old Japanese mother in law that's healthy, walks to the market every day and lives on her own in a 3 story house so she's walking up and down stairs all the time. Fried food is a regular part of her diet, yet it doesn't seem to have impacted her negatively.
- srvmshr 5y ago
  Glad to hear she's doing fine for her age. Surely we understand there are statistical variations, and she's on the healthier side luckily. But fried & smoked diets have very strong correlation to cancers in general, and these are validated by studies over last 2 decades. If I remember correctly, after prostrate, stomach cancer is the next common carcinoma in East Asia. (I could be a bit wrong on relative orders as this information was from my college time in 2000s). Each of us have different tolerances in our biological make-up. I wish people like her more years of good health.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    You call it "luck", but that's what I meant by people really don't understand the risks, I don't think it's luck at all - Doctors make lots of recommendations based on broad trends, but they don't really understand an individual person's risk.
    - savanaly 5y ago
      Isn't that like saying someone who won the lottery wasn't lucky, we just don't understand the individual person's chances to win? Like in some way it makes sense but for the purposes of actually deciding whether to recommend whether someone should buy a lottery ticket you can do quite well by looking at the broad trends.
samoppy 5y ago
- msie 5y ago
  "Japs" is a slur.

mmastrac 5y ago

> sashimi I'm cherry picking one thing from your great comment, but is it really risky? If properly frozen, fish is perfectly safe to consume.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jjulius 5y ago
>If properly frozen... That's the important part - there's risk if the fish isn't processed or handled correctly.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Isn't that true of literally everything though? Raw vegetables are not safe to eat unless washed properly, cooked meat isn't safe to eat unless cooked properly, raw meat isn't safe to eat unless handled properly, damn even something as simple as garlic oil isn't safe to eat unless you know exactly how it was prepared and stored. I have no idea if the risk with sashimi is any greater than with other things, but I'd guess not?
  - postingposts 5y ago
    It is true, BUT, (and this is a big but, almost a baby got back but) the risk is not the same for improperly handled vegetables vs. meats or seafood. Poorly handled veggies generally will give you E. Coli, or a similar sort of nasty stomach/food illness. Bad seafood can give you parasites. It’s like the risk of surfing vs. the risk of driving a wave-runner. Both can injure you on the water but a bad wave-runner accident might kill you.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      Bad seafoods can also give you a bunch of other bacterial infections. Meat, and in particular fish meat, is a breading ground for all sorts of bacteria. After washing a carrot, it stays safe to eat for hours at room temp. Fruits can stay safe to eat for days. Fish, on the other hand, goes bad in about 2 hours when it's cooked. Much faster when it's raw.
  - ryanbrunner 5y ago
    Sushi (with fish) and sashimi are usually on the list of foods to avoid for high risk people along with raw meats, cold deli meats, runny or raw eggs, etc. Those are usually a little overcautious, but I think it's safe to say there's more risk with fish than with eating a raw vegetable.
srvmshr 5y ago
Sashimi is a bit risky if the fish has been sliced for a while, and the temperature isn't as low as it should be. It quickly loses its texture. I personally avoid it in such cases & hence only use a handful of brick & mortar joints who I know personally. Good quality, fresh sashimi can be very expensive. I had few pieces (2-4) of bluefin tuna last week & it set me back by ~$70. Issues are few but then the majority of worms & food poisoning cases are from the chain sushi/sashimi joints, where the items are just placed-replaced several times on the conveyor or the fish has been in the open to quickly serve incoming orders. They are affordable to have regularly but I will not recommend. Japan is generally very safe about food quality, but sometimes dark pockets do exist in food industry nevertheless. (P.S: If any of you are traveling to Tokyo in future, I will be happy to recommend specific places which might interest your tastes. My email is in my bio)

01100011 5y ago

Exactly. I just posted this in another thread. It's a study on the link between high sodium intake(i.e. pickled foods like kimchi) and stomach cancer(5th most common cancer): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.801228/full#:~:text=The%20findings%20of%20this%20study,processed%20meat%20intakes%20were%20not https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.80122... I don't expect Koreans to stop eating kimchi anytime soon.

andreareina 5y ago
The effect size is also tiny in absolute numbers. With a base rate of 0.004 and a relative risk of 1.28 it would take what, 1000 people reducing their intake to prevent one case of cancer?
- drekk 5y ago
  In a population of 300 million, like the US, that's 300,000 prevented cancer cases. We reported about 5x as many new cases last year. I'm not saying we should mandate reduced sodium intake or anything, but having the ability to reduce cancer incidence by 20% is huge. Not just in terms of raw economics, but the societal impact of not losing grandma or grandpa unnecessarily is something we can't easily quantify. I doubt anyone in the US in the 90s expected smoking rates to drop the way they did, but it is possible to discourage unhealthy behaviors that have externalized costs, like smoking tobacco or eating garbage.

Johnny555 5y ago

Consider smoked and deep fried food items. Universally, we have evidence they are connected to cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Or that raw uncooked meat could be risky. Yet, the sashimi, basashi, tempura, and various grilled item food industry is going strong. Educated Japanese understand the risks but it is their way of life... Such risks from sodium get downplayed easily I'm not sure that anyone really understands the risks, and certainly not my 84 year old Japanese mother in law that's healthy, walks to the market every day and lives on her own in a 3 story house so she's walking up and down stairs all the time. Fried food is a regular part of her diet, yet it doesn't seem to have impacted her negatively.

srvmshr 5y ago
Glad to hear she's doing fine for her age. Surely we understand there are statistical variations, and she's on the healthier side luckily. But fried & smoked diets have very strong correlation to cancers in general, and these are validated by studies over last 2 decades. If I remember correctly, after prostrate, stomach cancer is the next common carcinoma in East Asia. (I could be a bit wrong on relative orders as this information was from my college time in 2000s). Each of us have different tolerances in our biological make-up. I wish people like her more years of good health.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  You call it "luck", but that's what I meant by people really don't understand the risks, I don't think it's luck at all - Doctors make lots of recommendations based on broad trends, but they don't really understand an individual person's risk.
  - savanaly 5y ago
    Isn't that like saying someone who won the lottery wasn't lucky, we just don't understand the individual person's chances to win? Like in some way it makes sense but for the purposes of actually deciding whether to recommend whether someone should buy a lottery ticket you can do quite well by looking at the broad trends.

samoppy 5y ago

msie 5y ago
"Japs" is a slur.