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Going to a Fugu restaurant is as casual as going to any other restaurant in Japan. (again, with no single death in 2012, 20.) Fugu is widely served at restaurants throughout Japan. After all, how could they live to write the article if Fugu is so lethal?Īlmost all Japanese never associate eating Fugu to automatic death. I feel the myth is also due to many articles such as "Dining With Death: Fugu at Sushi Zen." These articles sensationalize the writer's personal Fugu eating experience, describing their feeling that they may die tomorrow because they eat "the deadly fish, "which again, is far from the truth. The myth of automatic death sentence comes from the fact that many non-certified people prepared it by themselves before the Japanese government established the certification system. Because of this, it is very safe to eat Fugu. The certification process involves a few years of rigorous training and testing. First, one must be a licensed chef for at least five years before applying for Fugu certification. In Japan, one must obtain government certification to fillet Fugu. Therefore, it requires careful preparation for safe human consumption.
#Fugu deaths 2016 skin
Indeed, Fugu is poisonous - its skin and liver contain poison lethal to humans if consumed. (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) In fact, more people died from eating raw oysters in the US - thirty-six deaths between 19. That's definitely smaller than 1,800 deaths from foodborne diseases each year in the United States. In fact, from 2008 - 2017, there are only six deaths associated with eating Fugu in Japan. So, how many people die from eating Fugu each year in Japan?
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Your chance of getting in a car accident is higher than being attacked by a shark. Out of more than 470 species, only four have been involved in a significant number of fatal, unprovoked attacks on humans.Īccording to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), the average number of fatalities worldwide per year between 20 from unprovoked shark attacks is 4.3. Every shark in the ocean will attack and eat any human being it sees - the myth, thanks to the movies as Jaws and many overly- hyped "Shark Week" documentaries portraying the great white shark as dangerous man-eating fish. I feel that the Fugu myth in the US is very similar to the one of shark. The most recent book, How I Became a Sushi Chef, is a memoir of his culinary journey.Ĭontrary to popular myth in the US (and perhaps other countries as well), no one dies from eating Fugu.Įating Fugu does not automatically mean a death sentence like Homer Simpson experienced in the famous Simpson's Fugu episode. His writing is featured on Quora, The Huffington Post, Slate, Apple News, and he has published three books on sushi. Kaz has also appeared in videos for Grammarly and Survey Monkey, as well as ad campaigns for Adobe and Eventbrite.
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He has taught over 10,000 sushi lovers and even held lessons at the Culinary Institute of America at Copia.
#Fugu deaths 2016 professional
Over the course of his 18-year professional culinary career, Kaz has served top celebrities and some of the Bay Area's top companies, including Google, Facebook, Oracle, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon Wireless, and Citibank. Today, Kaz teaches corporate teams and sushi lovers of all stripes his craft with Breakthrough Sushi - the first and only sustainable team building sushi company in the US. His passion led him to be a diligent student and a skilled sushi chef at restaurants such as Minako (San Francisco's first organic, Japanese restaurant), Ozumo, and the famed Fort Mason restaurant, Greens. Kaz Matsune was born with a love for cooking.
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