Sushi is made up of cooked vinegared rice (shari) partnered with neta (other ingredients), usually raw fish or seafood. Rice makes up around 75% of the overall dish.
The vinegared rice called sushi-meshi is the mutually shared ingredient in both sushi and neta. Sashimi is the raw meat served by itself.
The ready to eat produce often eaten while on the go is widely seen as a healthy alternative to pre packaged sandwiches or meals.
Sushi’s popularity is proven by record sales that have risen by 88% over the past two years. The growing fad is increasingly more fashionable because it is so readily available.
Sushi has a lot of calories and carbohydrates with a typical roll containing 290 to 350 calories. This is the carbohydrate equivalent of two and a half to four slices of bread according to Eat To Lose, Eat To Win author Rachel Beller.
An average sushi lunch pack contains two or three rolls that can amount to over 1,050 calories. Common vegetables found in sushi are peppers, cucumber or avocado with a total average of 13g. One of your five a day are portions of 80g a piece.
Yo Sushi’s Mixed Sushi Box contains 755 calories. This totals more than a McDonald’s Big Mac and small fries. That’s not including soy sauce - there is 3g of salt in one tablespoon, nearly 50% of the recommended daily allowance for adults.
Fish is recommended to be eaten two to three times a week as part of a balanced diet however sushi does not contain much protein. In fact, the majority of sushi boxes don’t even have 25% of the recommended portion.
The average guideline for a portion of fish should be around 140g. A piece of fish in a California roll weighs around 5g so you would need to eat 28 servings to meet the criteria.
Sushi can comprise of high fat ingredients including cream cheese and mayonnaise that add to the amount of calories. It’s also low in calcium and lacks vitamin A, vitamin C and folate.
The costly food may be a Western trend because Japanese people are some of the healthiest in the world. The world’s oldest woman, Misao Ookawa is 115 years old and hails from Japan. The world's oldest man is also Japanese, Jiroemon Kimura, aged 115.
