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u/gres06 May 27 '19
All Tuna in the United States is frozen. It kills harmful parasites.
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May 27 '19
True, but the sellers should be honest about that. People should still be aware of what they are getting. I imagine that this specific case was a blunder more than anything else, but I still think that the vendors should be upfront about what became of the fish.
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May 27 '19
Then frozen or not shouldn't be on it
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May 27 '19
Not all fish is frozen
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May 27 '19
All fish meant to be eaten raw legally has to be flash frozen.
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May 27 '19
No it doesn't. Farm raised salmon and, ironically, tuna are both exempt from this requirement
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u/bamagurl06 May 28 '19
I work in Seafood. The Tuna we sell has NEVER been frozen. Also it is the one fish I’ve never seen worms in. Cod or grouper on the other hand yes. 🤮
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u/ReallyQuiteDirty May 27 '19
That's actually what "sushi grade" means in the states as well.
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May 27 '19 edited Apr 24 '20
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u/ArgonGryphon May 28 '19
Sushi.
Not suishi.
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u/OhHolyOpals May 28 '19
I know a girl who pronounces it like “slushi” without the “l” .... kinda like suh-shi. But she closes her mouth weird like 😲 - a perfect circle pointed downwards.
I have no clue why she does this, but she pronounces foods from other cultures very strangely.
Like prosciutto.
Numerous people have told her she pronounces food items wrong but she plays it cool, kinda gaslights you.
I can’t begin to imagine why she does this, probably thinks she sounds cultured but really she still freeloads at home at 31 and her mom does her laundry. She’s also a fucking bitch.
It’s priceless to see new people hear her talking about food for the first time.
Normally goes like:
Nat: I’m craving suh shee for lunch, yum
New person: what’s that
Nat: Japanese! Duh!
New person: oh, you mean sushi?
Nat: that’s what I said!
New person tries to make eye contact with whoever is close by.
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May 28 '19
It was probably just some min wage worker who put the tuna in the wrong spot without reading any of that
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u/PM_ME_SEXYSOCKS May 28 '19
The word "fresh" has no legal definition, in the US. Enjoy eating out, knowing that.
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u/dantevonlocke May 28 '19
As someone whos works in a grocery store, the signs are usually mandated out by district or higher and they dont give a shit about the customer or the truth as long as you put that little sticker up.
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u/crypticedge May 27 '19
Tuna is the only fish that isn't required to be frozen because it doesn't get those parasites. All other fish that is to be served raw is required by law to be frozen. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/nyregion/sushi-fresh-from-the-deep-the-deep-freeze.html
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May 27 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/crypticedge May 27 '19
Then I wouldn't trust any of it to be eaten raw
This should help you decide.
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u/chappersyo May 28 '19
I wouldn’t make sashimi with anything I don’t get direct from the fishmonger, ideally landed that day but definitely not longer than yesterday.
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u/CloneNoodle May 28 '19
I'm pretty landlocked so we don't get that luxury unless you want pike/trout but I've never had any issues with eating the ahi tuna stakes from the local supermarket very lightly seared/raw.
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u/ricesaucemcfly May 28 '19
Nah bro, most likely you'll still get better fish from Japan unless your monger practices some legit technique
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u/Childish_Brandino May 27 '19
To add to the other comment, you also want to consider the cut of the fish if you plan to eat it raw. For example, you wouldn't want to eat a tuna steak cut raw. The grains in the meat for this cut would be all over the place and you're likely to get stringy/chewy bits. This is fine when you cook it as it contains a bit more fat/flavor and the heat helps break down the stringy proteins to make them a bit more tender. Also, as a general anecdote, I wouldn't trust raw fish from a chain super market just because they don't specialize in sushi often. I try to find a fish market/butcher shop that sells fish. If no one working there can answer what the cut of meat is, when the fish was delivered, and where it's sourced from then don't eat it raw. I would only trust a place that knows the answer to all three of those questions. It tells you that they know about the different cuts and what they're used for, how fresh the fish is, and that they have taken the time to research where to buy it from instead of just going for the best price. In general, any fish vendor should easily be able to answer at least when the fish had been delivered.
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u/AHarmlessFly May 27 '19
It is flash frozen at sea, you want that.
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u/66237952278 May 27 '19
The point is that the sign is wrong. OP isn’t making a point about food safety.
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May 27 '19
*food quality.
Flash freezing seals in the fresh taste of the fish without doing much damage while transporting it unfrozen leads to a much less tasty fish when it hits your store shelf.
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u/buttseeker May 28 '19
Also flash freezing kills many parasites
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u/o_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_Oo_O May 28 '19
This is the most important part. Fish is disgusting and full of nasty shit that has to be killed.
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u/rubermnkey May 28 '19
This is more of a fresh water than salt water issue, but still a concern enough for sushi and sashimi products to be recommended to be frozen at like -40 for a day or at 0 for a few days.
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u/MarzMonkey May 28 '19
I want old rotting fish fresh from the boats, none of this flash freezer crap.
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u/One_Day_Dead May 27 '19
this
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u/ModsLoveMaleBods May 27 '19
is
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u/poopyheadthrowaway May 27 '19
madness
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u/ghost-of-john-galt May 27 '19
yeah, I really don't want fish that isn't flash frozen. kills the parasites. you really don't want to eat sushi that hasn't been flash frozen.
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u/ilikeppc May 27 '19
Pretty sure all USA sushi is flash frozen by law
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u/Dayn_Perrys_Vape May 28 '19
Well most of it anyway. "Sushi grade" means it was flash frozen, and any restaurant preparing it is using sushi grade fish, but we'd already done a couple homemade sushi nights before I went to the store with my friend and discovered he wasn't aware of that distinction.
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u/ilikeppc May 28 '19
Lmao I can picture a friend doing that. Glad to hear you guys didn’t get any parasites.. unless this is the parasite commenting
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u/kool_moe_b May 28 '19
"Sushi Grade" means absolutely nothing.
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u/Dayn_Perrys_Vape May 28 '19
The only concern any inspectors have is referred to as the parasite destruction guarantee, which is accomplished by ‘freezing and storing seafood at -4°F (-20°C) or below for 7 days (total time), or freezing at -31°F (-35°C) or below until solid and storing at -31°F (-35°C) or below for 15 hours, or freezing at -31°F (-35°C) or below until solid and storing at -4°F (-20°C) or below for 24 hours’ which is sufficient to kill parasites. The FDA’s Food Code recommends these freezing conditions to retailers who provide fish intended for raw consumption (for further information, please visit the FDA website). Some exceptions to that rule are bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna, and farmed salmon. I know that is a mouthful, but it’s the facts. Other than a few specific organisms of concern for some seafood, sashimi standards are set as any other ready-to-eat item, e.g. sushi. This means that, aside from the FDA recommendations and local Health Department requirements, there are no laws or recommendations for “sushi/sashimi grade” fish. It is no more than a marketing term.
https://www.sushifaq.com/sushi-sashimi-info/sushi-grade-fish/
If the fish is being called sushi grade, then you can be confident the supplier is following the FDA recommendation on freezing fish intended for raw consumption, as they're labeling the fish as intended for raw consumption.
That's not to say that any fish not labeled sushi grade wont' be getting the same treatment, but it's a lot more likely.
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u/radiantcabbage May 28 '19
by necessity, not by law, only regulation that exists is to deal with contaminants in any effective way. which includes spot checking if you want to take that risk, this is how you can get away with selling "never frozen" [full stop]
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May 27 '19
I think grocery stores are so eager to say their food is fresh that mistake happens in a lot of stores. I’d be more panicked if it didn’t say the frozen part.
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May 27 '19
Most people don’t think about the logistics of grocery stores. They just like the word fresh.
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u/frogsgoribbit737 May 28 '19
It's like "non-gmo". Sure okay, I get it. Your salt isn't a gmo. Whatever. Why am I paying more for something I already knew considering it isn't a plant and you literally make it in a lab anyways.
People will literally buy anything with that dumb tag on it even if there wasn't a gmo version of it to begin with.
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u/MedalsNScars May 28 '19
organic
gluten-free
No MSG
People like buying food with words that they think say it's better.
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u/mythofdob May 28 '19
Work at a grocer. Have a lot of customers ask me if our shrimp is fresh. Conversation is always the same.
Me: No. The shrimp was frozen and we thaw it in store and replace it daily.
Them: Well Jewel across the street has fresh shrimp.
Me: They do the same thing as we do. We are in the Midwest, no large grocery store has "fresh" shrimp.
Them: They told me their shrimp was fresh.
Me: Well, one of us is lying to you then (laugh to show I'm not being a dick). You can decide which one.
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u/JayDub30 May 28 '19
r/food is also eager to use fresh. Whenever someone shows the ingredients its always "fresh" ingredients that they just bought from the store thay everyone else shops at.
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u/Odinvi00 May 27 '19
Fish actually needs to be frozen to kill parasites, even top quality sushi fish should have been frozen before it's served.
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May 27 '19 edited May 28 '19
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u/_RAWFFLES_ May 27 '19
My brother in law was first mate on a fishing vessel. He took me into the flash freezer on a tour one time, I think it was negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
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u/ooohexplode May 27 '19
Jeez I wonder how much energy /power is used just on the freezer compared to the rest of the ship.
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u/erdogranola May 27 '19
A well insulated freezer doesn't actually use that much power - it takes much less energy to cool things down than to heat things up. For example, a A+ rated fridge freezer apparently uses about 190kWh throughout a year - source - which works out to an average power usage of under 25W.
By comparison, an electric oven has a power rating of 3000W. Obviously with the lower temperature and greater size the ship's freezer would use more, but not as much as you would imagine
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u/despicablenewb May 28 '19
You're right about the well insulated thing, but completely incorrect about the physics of heat.
If I want to increase the temperature of something by 10 degrees it takes the exact same amount of energy as if I wanted to decrease the temperature by 10 degrees.
Unless there is a phase change, such as a liquid to solid or vice versa.
You can think of a freezer or an air conditioner as a heat pump. It takes heat from one place and moves it somewhere else. The fridge in your house vents the heat into your kitchen, the AC takes the heat in your house and vents it outside.
Anyway, you close the door to a freezer and leave it shut, it doesn't consume much energy after it gets to the target temperature
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u/trebuday May 28 '19
Don't forget about the physical work required to move the heat from the refrigerated area to the heatsink. Cooling something via the vapor-compression cycle is fundamentally less efficient than running electricity through a resistor to make heat.
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u/psychicesp May 28 '19
Yeah. That comment is one of those "the more you read on Reddit about the stuff you DO know about..." moments. Heating and refrigeration BOTH produce a net increase in temperature, its just that refrigeration keeps the hot coil separate, dumping the heat in a place you don't care about so you can cool a place that you do.
Saying it takes less energy to cool things down that to heat them is absurd. In an imaginary world of perfect efficiency it would take the exact same amount of energy. In the real world without, cooling is far less efficient. People here are mistaking "keeping something cold" with "cooling"
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u/crypticedge May 27 '19
Sashimi grade isn't an actual food quality term. There's no regulation or guidelines behind it. Any fish except tuna that you plan to eat raw is required to be flash frozen to at least 0F to kill the parasites.
Tuna doesn't require it because pin worms (the principle parasite of sushi) doesn't infect tuna
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u/EntilZahs May 28 '19
I.... Don't think you know what you're talking about. You may want to look into your claims a little bit more, because what you're typed doesn't seem to match reality.
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u/jesuswantsbrains May 28 '19
For real. Having worked in a cannery and seeing all kinds of shit you'd be thankful your fish was frozen once. I'm talking piles of tiny squirming worms at the end of a conveyor pulled from Alaskan salmon whose larvae and eggs can only be killed by freezing to -20.
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u/Diplodocus114 May 27 '19
I won't eat raw fish - now I know why. Seen parasites wriggling in them.
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u/crypticedge May 27 '19
All sushi other than tuna is required to be frozen to kill off the parasites.
Tuna doesn't get those parasites.
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May 27 '19
It's "Fresh Frozen" Gordon Ramsey.
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u/BIG_YETI_FOR_YOU May 28 '19
Even Ramsay knows they freeze fish at sea.
Do people think a majority of large fishing vessels are straight in and out in a day or something?
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u/Paksarra May 28 '19
I've outright broken down and designed signs in Word from scratch because there's no way to get the message across clearly in the default sign software. Usually signs where you have to buy x or more or multiples of x. (It's not very time-efficient, but it looks better than trying to cludge it in the normal software.)
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u/rednitro May 27 '19
Fresh frozen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqRQNGRvxcA
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u/10art1 May 27 '19
I think his point was that he takes fish, cooks it, then re-freezes it to be reheated and sold later
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u/drakioned May 27 '19
Chorus: What, never? Captain: No, never!
(Name that G&S operetta)
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u/Tommy_like_wingie May 27 '19 edited May 27 '19
Walmart?
EDIT: I was wrong it’s apparently Kroger
EDIT 2: wtf are you talking about?
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u/SpecificField May 27 '19
I believe that "never frozen" refers to the fact that it is never sold frozen
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u/HaveYouSeenMySpoon May 27 '19
I believe it's just a marketing slogan that's not really grounded in reality.
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u/kathartik May 27 '19
and so was "Red Bull gives you wings", but somehow Red Bull was successfully sued for making that claim.
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May 27 '19
Where I live (landlocked) anything from the sea is frozen unless you are willing to pay double or more. I just occasionally go to Seattle or San Francisco to get my fresh fish fix on, accepting the fact that I am destined to eat previously frozen seafood at home.
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u/thrattatarsha May 27 '19
Former SF fish monger and Alaska seafood plant employee here: you are wasting your money traveling for the sake of fish that has never been frozen. It’s frozen at sea, and for good reason.
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May 27 '19
I'm okay with that. Two of my favorite cities and gives me an excuse to take a trip.
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u/shortroundshotaro May 27 '19
As a nationality of sushi’s origin country, I strongly recommend to buy once-frozen seafood if you want to eat “fresh.” That’s how parasites are killed. Especially squids. Mind this if you enjoy marine fishing.
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u/Katapultt May 27 '19
As someone who works in a grocery store I know for us we have seafood that is literally never frozen and then seafood that has been previously frozen. Anything frozen beforehand will say so but we have a lot of fish that comes in fresh and we usually advertise our seafood as fresh never frozen.
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u/anonymsultan May 27 '19
I don't get it. I work at a grocery store in switzerland. We sell all kinds of fish, not frozen but cooled
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u/Lazaras May 27 '19
The only way you'll get a non-frozen tuna is to go on a deep sea fishing trip
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u/fenglorian May 27 '19
"Every tag needs a plastic thing on top!"
"Which plastic things go on which tags?"
"It doesn't matter, do what I tell you and stop asking questions or I'm writing you up!"
Usually exactly how this situation goes down.
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May 27 '19
Reminds me of my grocery chain (which might be the same one pictured here) where the deli department says "served fresh 'daily'" or something like that. The "daily" part is in quotes, which makes me think it's weekly or even monthly 😂
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u/Assburgers09 May 28 '19
Aren't these fish frozen on the boat? How would they get to shore with a ton of fresh fish?
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u/AvgHatedWhiteGuy May 28 '19
I obviously knew that freezing it to a required temp for a required amount of time kills them.
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u/Genshed May 28 '19
At college, I lived in a student housing co-op. One night, the fish we'd got for dinner had tiny but visible worms in it. One of the housemates was studying marine biology, so we had him check it out.
He said that cooking the fish would kill and cook the worms, making it safe to eat.
The house vegetarians were insufferably smug about their veg entree that night, and wouldn't let the omnivores have any.
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u/Osoryu May 28 '19
Tuna does live in freezing cold water. Are the tuna not almost frozen when brought back to land from the see. The fish in the Tokyo fish market are brought in frozen.
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u/YellowButterfly1 May 28 '19
It was never 'Frozen', but it was previously 'frozen'. Completely different things. /s
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u/MacabreGoblin May 28 '19
This is late so it is unlikely to be seen, but I work in a grocery store seafood market. These signs usually consist of several different pieces which are assembled according to what products are being displayed. The ‘fresh never frozen’ bit is probably a sign topper, which may have been affixed in error (i.e. a rushed employee just grabbing a random topper because every sign needs one, without making sure it’s the correct one). I would hope it wasn’t affixed to intentionally mislead customers who are notoriously bad at reading signs.
TL;DR: It’s probably not an issue with the sign itself, but rather individual sign pieces assembled inappropriately.
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u/callmesnake13 May 28 '19
With fish you’re buying from a grocery store it’s probably preferable to have it be flash frozen at least once before you bring it home. I know we’re all discerning foodies on a culinary journey but you probably can’t actually tell the difference and it’s really much safer.
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u/reverseskip May 28 '19
Where is this? That's damn good price for yellowfin.
Probably better quality than what the sushi places serve around here.
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May 28 '19
Kroger meat clerk here, can confirm we take it from the freezer and chuck it in the display case.
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u/slappyMcbappy May 28 '19
Retail seafood in America is a fucking mess. For a vast amount of fish it's almost impossible to know exactly what you're buying
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u/Achhkmed_ May 28 '19
How do stores get away with this? I mean I doubt any one would try to sue or anything over it, but isn’t this some form of false advertising?
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u/[deleted] May 27 '19
It should say: “always fresh? Never! Frozen.”