Here’s One More Reason Not To Eat Sashimi Often

The one thing that I look forward to the most in any Japanese restaurant is sashimi.

I’m not really good at describing food, but let’s just say that it’s so freaking good.

But when I was younger, my mother always tells me that eating too much sashimi is not good for my body.

I wasn’t sure why, but I refrained from eating them too often.

Not sure what my “too often” meant?

Here, let me explain.

There’s a 30-year-old man from California who apparently ate raw fish (sashimi) or sushi every single day.

Well, that stopped when he pulled a 1.6m long tapeworm out from his body.

What happened

This man was in the toilet, in agony from stomach cramps and “bloody diarrhoea”.

He saw something hanging at his “rear end” and thought that it was his guts.

He pulled it out and look at this new-found part of his body.

Sure enough, he realised that it was a tapeworm, as it was moving.

He wrapped the thing around a cardboard toilet paper tube, placed it in a plastic bag, and ran into the Emergency Department asking to be treated.

His doctor, Dr Banh, stretched the then dead body on the floor and measured it.

It was 1.6m long, far shorter than the maximum length of 15m that it can grow to.

Dr Banh wasn’t sure which species of tapeworm it belonged to, nor did he know how long it had been residing inside the man.

It’s all sashimi’s fault

The man was positive that he got the tapeworm from eating raw fish, according to The Straits Times.

Since he had not been travelling or drinking water from questionable sources, his doctor was “almost positive” as well.

However, Dr Banh explained that the problem was not with his daily consumption of raw fish.

It was how they were prepared.

The US Food and Drug Administration had released guidelines for controlling parasites that may live in seafood.

Seafood should be cooked/frozen at certain temperatures for a certain amount of time.

All about tapeworms

Here’s some handy info from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Tapeworms are parasites that can invade the digestive tract of animals and humans.

The culprit looks like this:

Humans are most likely to be infected with parasites like worms when they eat uncooked/undercooked seafood that contains parasite larvae.

The larvae begin to grow once they are inside the host.

Common parasites in seafood

• Roundworms: They have a long round body, and vary in length from several millimetres to 2m
• Tapeworms: A type of flatworm ranging in size from about 1mm to over 15m
• Flukes: A flatworm, and most range from 5mm to several centimetres long

Symptoms of parasitic infection

• Stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea
• Weight loss
• Anaemia
• Damage to major organs like the liver and heart
• Damage to the central nervous system

Dishes that could cause parasitic infections

• Ceviche, a Latin American dish with raw fish
• Herring roe
• Sashimi and sushi
• Drunken crabs
• Cold smoked fish

How to kill parasites

• By thoroughly cooking seafood
• By freezing seafood at specified temperatures for prescribed periods, depending on the type of parasite. Flukes, for example, are more resistant to freezing than roundworms.

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This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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Featured image: The Straits Times