Guest posts at sustainablesushi.net do not necessarily represent the opinion of the owner/operator of this website (Casson Trenor). In fact, they are often chosen specifically because they offer an alternative perspective and can give rise to interesting debate. Guest authors neither pay nor receive any sort of compensation for their participation. Illustrations and captions are provided by sustainablesushi.net unless indicated otherwise.
Fitness guru Denis Faye of Beachbody
Sushi: The Ultimate Sports Supplement?
By Denis Faye
Everyone loves the idea of fitness, but actually doing it is a different story. It all sounds so wonderful until you realize you need to exercise every day and, even worse, cut all the good stuff out of our diet.
However, it’s not all that bad. In fact, some of the foods you consider indulgent can offer huge health benefits. (The exercising part is a whole other story. You’re on your own for that one.) One perfect example of this is sushi. If done right, it’s not just good for, it’s a great way to get the nutrients you need to propel that active lifestyle. Let’s take a closer look at everyone favorite Japanese culinary contribution.
But before I start, I need to throw down a few caveats. First off, I’m not talking about those Double-Rainbow-Spicy-Crab-Inside-Out-California-Detroit Rolls that many consider crucial to a visit to sushi bar. They’re usually loaded with sodium-rich or fatty sauces and the minute amount of fish within has usually been fried or mayonnaised into nutritional oblivion. I’m talking straight sushi or sashimi: a nice slice of raw fish (sorry, unagi lovers), maybe a little rice, or maybe a simple maki: fish and rice a little nori (seaweed) wrapped around it.
"Soy sauce is not a beverage." -- Chef Hajime Sato
Also, keep the soy sauce to a minimum. Exercise tends to drain the body of sodium, so the physically fit can get away with more salt intake, but there are still limits. Stick to low-sodium sauce and dip the fish part of the sushi instead of saturating the rice part. If the fish is good, you won’t want to drown out the flavor anyway!
Finally, moderation is key. When it comes to eating healthy, if you need to loosen your belt after a meal, no matter how nutrition it was, you blew it. But as long as you don’t get carried away, fish is one of the healthiest sources of protein you can get. The main reason for this is the super-healthy fat that comes with it.
While many people mistakenly avoid all fat when trying to eat right, the truth is, fat is a vital nutrient. It’s crucial that you have it in your diet. Most fish is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids, which help brain function and act as an anti-inflammatory – a great asset when dealing with bodily stress induced by hard, physical training. Salmon and tuna are both high in omega-3s, as is mackerel, but as you know, the mackerel used in sushi tends to be cured in salt, driving up the sodium count.
As for mercury-in-seafood debate, unless you’re pregnant, nursing, or a small child, you generally don’t need to worry about it. For the rest of us, the omega-3 benefits are worth a little mercury. As long as you limit fish intake to 4 servings a week or so, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.
Renewable energy?
Now, onto the rice. Generally speaking, brown rice is healthier for you. It’s higher in fiber, which slows absorption into the blood stream. That’s a good thing, because absorbing too many carbs too fast can lead to blood sugar spikes, which, in turn, can lead to type 2 diabetes and obesity. But there are a couple factors here that make white rice okay. First, while you don’t have the fiber to slow absorption, the fat and protein in the fish can serve the same function; so make sure your chef is generous with the fish. And, in the event that you do overdo the rice, here’s a neat thing about working out: After intense exercise, especially when it involves anaerobic (or weightlifting) activity, your blood sugar drops because you were using it as fuel. So, whereas that influx of carbs (white rice) into your system might be bad at other times, post-workout, it serves to top off your tank and rush other nutrients into your system faster. In the fitness world, we call that kind of timed nutrition a recovery meal.
Finally, seaweed is so good for you on so many levels. For the athlete, it’s packed with minerals, or electrolytes, which are often wicked out in training. It also has antioxidant properties, which strengthen the immune system – something else that can get compromised after intense workouts.
So work hard and eat right, but treat yourself to a sushi meal every now and again. It’s the right thing to do. Who knew eating right could be so much fun?
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Starting out as “weight challenged,” Denis Faye dropped 50 pounds following a 5-year jaunt through Australia, a trip that helped him become the extreme fitness and sports enthusiast he is today. He’s been a professional journalist for 20 years, writing for Surfer, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Outside, Wired, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, GQ, Surfer, and Pacific Longboarder. His sports include swimming, scuba, trekking, rock climbing, mountain biking, spelunking, and — most importantly — surfing. Denis writes for Beachbody, which provides effective and popular exercise videos including the well known P90x program.
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by a team from CNN on sustainability issues in the sushi industry.This clip is me explaining what I call the “4-S rule” – a simple, if somewhat crude, guide to eating in a more sustainable fashion at the sushi bar (oh, and a small correction to CNN’s byline – I am a co-founder of Tataki Sushi Bar, but I don’t actually own the restaurant.)
As I discuss in the video, there are four adjectives, each starting with the letter S, that form the eponymous rule.If a sushi bar patron bears these descriptors in mind while he or she orders, it can markedly diminish the environmental footprint created by dinner.This is not a perfect system – there are exceptions to each of the four “S” words – but by and large, it does help one to order a more sustainable sushi meal overall.
Skipjack tuna served nigiri-style with gobo, scallions, and a shiso leaf. The skipjack is the smallest tuna found in the sushi industry, and has both the lowest average mercury content and the highest reproduction rate.
The first word is SMALL.Smaller fish are generally lower on the trophic scale (food chain), grow more quickly, die younger, and breed in larger numbers.These biological survival tactics are employed by many fish to help them withstand heavy predation — they play the numbers game and simply create as many offspring as possible so a few manage to escape the yawning maws of hungry predators. In essence, these are the kind of fish that are designed to be fed upon.Their physiology and population dynamics are generally more resilient to our fishing pressure and protein demand than top-of-the-food-chain carnivores, such as large tunas, swordfish, and sharks.Moreover, smaller fish generally have less mercury accumulation in their systems than these apex predators due to their shorter life spans and less voracious appetites.
Wild coho salmon, sashimi-style. Alaskan coho is well managed, healthy for consumers, and seasonally available.
The next word is SEASONAL.Seasonality is key to sustainability.If we are to reduce our carbon dependency and rekindle our connection with the ocean, we need to be more aware of where we are and what time of year it is when we order our fish.A good rule of thumb is to order off the specials board rather than the laminated menu when possible – any items on a year-round menu are unlikely to be sourced on a basis of seasonal awareness.It was our demand that certain intrinsically seasonal products be available to us year-round that gave rise to environmental missteps like conventional salmon farming.This category also offers us the added opportunity to take advantage of seasonal vegetables and fruits, which innovative chefs often incorporate into their specials.
Pacific saury prepared over wood charcoal. These cold-water schooling forage fish have high levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
The third word is perhaps the most surprising – SILVER.Eat sushi that is served with a silver skin still on it.This category of fish is known as hikari mono in Japanese, and contains mackerels, halfbeaks, shads, and similar fish.These animals tend to be loaded with omega-3s as well as being low in mercury, and can be sourced from many well-managed fisheries.An added bonus is that the hikari mono are some of the most treasured fish in the repertoire of a traditional sushi chef; a menu featuring these items will often prove to be an unforgettable culinary experience. I highly encourage all sushi-goers to explore the world of hikari mono – you just may find your new “absolute ultimate all-time favorite” sushi item.
Kumomoto oysters on the half-shell with momoji oroshi. Oysters are high in protein and easy to raise in low-impact farms.
The final word is SHELLFISH, and I’m speaking specifically of bivalves and mollusks.Not only are these creatures excellent sources of protein, but they are considered by many to be delicacies and aphrodisiacs. Bivalve and mollusk aquaculture has sound environmental benefits as well: it tends to involve relatively low-impact farming methods when compared to other types of fish farming, such as tuna ranches or salmon farms.As filter-feeders, animals like clams, scallops, and oysters can be grown without the use of any additional feed. This reduces their dependence on marine resources and eliminates the kind of inefficient protein use that we find in operations like hamachiand unagiranches. These mollusks also grow quickly, and can be raised in cages and bags that require no dredging or other types of seabed alteration during harvest.
That’s about the size of it.Small, seasonal, silver, and shellfish – a quick-and-dirty road map to a more eco-groovy sushi experience.There are, as I mentioned earlier, numerous exceptions to this rule, but it serves as a fairly reliable lodestone for those who are interested in shifting their sushi dining habits toward a more sustainable paradigm.
Oh, and one final quip: as it happens, the letter S occurs exactly four times in the term “sustainable sushi.” Remember that to keep the 4-S rule in mind.
Ok, so it’s no secret that I love sardines. They’re a great example of the kind of fish that we should be eating more of. They reproduce in large numbers, breed at a young age, and are exceptionally fecund. They’re low on the trophic scale and thus are an efficient source of protein, so it’s not tough for me to bang the drum about them when I talk about how we can eat fish more sustainably.
Sardines are low in mercury, PCBs, and other contaminents due to their short lifespans and to where they live in the water column. Also, like many cold-water oily fish, sardines are high in Omega-3s. Awesome.
But there’s a problem.
The vast majority of the sardines we get in this country are sealed away in funky little pull-tab tins that make me think of oil drum fires, harmonicas, and shady alleys in East St. Louis. This unfortunate image problem makes it difficult to put the humble sardine back on the menu in American restaurants. We’ve developed a taste for “fresh” fish (don’t get me started on how ridiculous the concept of “fresh” is).
Our sardines are not fresh. They languish in decade-old cans in the back of the pantry, waiting for some catastrophic event when the infrastructure of the country collapses and we are forced to live on tinned food in underground bomb shelters with half of the neighborhood.
The fact is, though, that the sardine is a diamond in the rough. Sashimi-grade sardines are healthy, delicious morsels that give us an excellent option for positive change at the sushi bar as well as the seafood counter. Any decent sushi bar should offer iwashi when sardines are in season, and I highly recommend giving them a try.
That being said, there’s still one problem… and yes, it’s sustainability related.
The vast majority of the sardines that come into this country are from enormous foreign fisheries that have little or no transparency and management. Morocco, Thailand, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Poland, and countless other countries have sardine fisheries. But which ones are sustainable?
The answer: I don’t know. I’m not sure that anyone has a good answer.
The folks at FishWise and Seafood Watch have been wrestling with this issue for a while. There really isn’t much information available on most sardine stocks. It’s probably due to an ongoing issue that permeates much of our relationship to the ocean — we like big fish. And pretty fish. And brightly-colored fish. And fish with sharp teeth.
But little fish with no “personalities”, no stories, no flashy colors — people don’t really seem to care about them too much. There’s an historic trend of these “forage fish” (small fish like sardines and smelt that form the lower levels of the food web and support many larger fish) being ignored by fishery management schemes. Even after the train wreck at Cannery Row, it’s still common to think that these tiny carbon-copy fish are infinite in number: they are all too often of negligible importance to the scientists and policy-makers that spend their time dealing with sharks and salmon.
But little but little, this is starting to change.
A new announcement by the Marine Stewardship Council showcases a great example of this paradigm shift. The French purse-seine sardine fishery in the Bay of Biscay is now officially in full MSC assessment. Those of you familiar with the MSC are likely aware that any fishery that makes it into full assessment has a very high chance of gaining certification.
I have issues with the MSC, mainly based around stringency of benchmarks and their process for demanding and monitoring fishery improvements, but even I have to admit that the MSC brings one very important piece of the sustainability process to the table: traceability. MSC-certified products are tracked in such a way that it is possible to determine nearly everything about the fish in question — stock status, catch method, even load/unload data and break-of-bulk points are recorded. This is an incredbibly important step forward for most fisheries, but for sardiners, it’s an unheard-of leap.
Sardines have a lot going for them. They’re the kind of animals that have a good chance at supporting our seafood demand due to inherent physiology and life history. But if we don’t give them the attention they deserve and fish for them in a sustainable and traceable manner, well, those old tins in your pantry might start to look a lot more appetizing.
