Ask Lemmy

Here's a weird one that I only learned recently, at 41 years old, and changed both my ability to consume seafood and my feelings toward food preparation in general....

Ever since I was in 4th grade, after getting very sick eating my first lobster in Nantucket, MA, I couldn't eat seafood. For a long time we thought it was a shellfish allergy, but over time I learned that a) I could eat shrimp tempura just fine, but not regular shrimp; b) lots of seafood made me sick, like sea bass, but anything fresh water was fine.

For decades, nobody I asked could figure out what the deal was; I eventually assumed that it was just something about things that grow up in the sea, and things like tempura could mask the problem flavor whatever

This year, I went to Japan with my family, and of course I'm not an asshole who would stop them from having the best sushi in the world. We booked a reservation at a sushi restaurant, assuming I could order something I liked, but discovered too late that it was "omakase", meaning a set course of the sushi chef's choice.

So, like always, hopeful that I might find something new I could eat, I decided I would give things the sniff test and if it smelled bad to me I'd pawn it off on my family. First dish lands, it smells great, so I eat it. it was delicious.

I asked the su-chef what it was, excited to find a new type of seafood I liked.

....It was sea bass. Something that definitely makes me sick. Next? Sea urchin. Then shrimp. And a whole bunch of other stuff I could never normally eat.

I was in shock. I asked if they knew why it could be but they didn't know. I talked about it with a bunch of people throughout the trip but nobody had any ideas, until the owner of the hot springs inn in Hakone said "oh, I know, my friend has the same problem when we travel to America for business".

He introduced me to the concept of Ikejime, a humane method for killing fish (and the shellfish and mollusk counterparts).

When big fisheries outside Japan kill their fish, they typically suffocate them in liquids with insufficient oxygen, then drain their blood later on. The stress of dying slowly releases hormones into their bloodstream, which soaks into their tissue after they're dead. THAT is what makes me sick, and the Japanese consider it "dirty". So Japanese fisheries use the process called Ikejime to swiftly kill the fish and quickly drain their blood.

This is also why seafood in Japan tastes so good to everyone compared to elsewhere.

There are even some small fisheries on the US West Coast that practice ikejime. I've found several sushi restaurants near me with Japanese head chefs who source their fish/shellfish/mollusks from Japan or specifically fisheries in the US that practice ikejime.

Suddenly I have access to a whole new world of seafood that I never could have enjoyed before.

As a result, I've started thinking now about how the killing process of ALL animals can alter their biochemistry and change their taste and edibility.

So I generally now consider any killing of animals for food that isn't humane and "clean" to be objectively "wrong" even if I can still eat non-seafood like that.

Absolutely mind blowing food experience.