How to Survive Eating Bad Sushi

6 min read

You’re enjoying a cross-country drive, but you’re getting hungry. As you pull in for gas, you notice some sushi, and it looks delicious. So you buy some to snack on during your drive. Before long, you feel nauseous and have severe stomach cramps. And after relieving yourself, you see blood in your stool. Oh no. You ate bad sushi. And if you don’t act fast, you could lose a limb, do permanent damage to your nervous system, or die.

Sushi has long been popular in Japan, and it arrived on the U.S. mainland in the mid 20th century. Its popularity has exploded, and now, sushi is a $22 billion a year industry worldwide. Bluefin tuna is the most popular fish for sushi, and mackerel, swordfish, red snapper, Japanese Yellowtail, and salmon are also popular. But while it’s a popular food, eating sushi can be risky. Many dangers lurk around eating raw fish.

If the fish, and the sushi, aren’t correctly stored and handled, you risk getting severe bacterial infections. If you’re lucky, you’ll just feel nauseous and have diarrhea, but if you’re not lucky, you could eat flesh-eating bacteria and need your limbs amputated.

And eating raw fish can also bring parasites such as tapeworms into your body. But how would you even know if a worm was eating you from the inside? In 2018, Kenny Bahn arrived at an emergency room. He had eaten a lot of raw salmon and said he had blood in his diarrhea. He showed the medics a plastic bag. Inside the bag, wrapped around a toilet paper roll, was a tapeworm that Kenny had pulled out of himself.

The tapeworm was a whopping 1.7 m (5.5 ft) long. It’s estimated that 83% of sushi has a low bacteria count, but what about the other 17%? Is it worth giving in to your sushi cravings? If you’re longing for these raw fish delights, what could you do to survive eating bad sushi?

Step 1: Do your research

Start by looking at reviews of the sushi restaurant. See if it is highly rated, and whether anyone has reported getting food poisoning. And set standards when it comes to buying sushi. Go to restaurants that specialize in sushi, and do not buy sushi from a gas station. Always ask about the quality of the fish. When was it bought, or how long have they had it, how do they store it, and how long it has been on ice?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Protection says that fish should be frozen at -20°C (-4°), and it can be kept for up to a week.

Step 2: Check credentials

If you’re a bit of a daredevil when it comes to food, you have probably heard about fugu, or puffer fish.
Puffer fish is one of the most deadly fish in the world, thanks to its tetrodotoxin. This toxin is 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide. An amount the size of a head of a pin is enough to kill you. And one puffer fish has enough toxin in its body to kill 30 people.

A chef who creates fugu sushi needs to take extra training. So before you eat any puffer fish or fugu sushi, make sure it’s prepared by a chef who earned the special license. If the fugu sushi is not prepared correctly, and some of the toxin is left in your meal, you’re in for a rough time.

Step 3: Know the Symptoms of Fugu Poisoning

If you eat bad puffer fish or fugu sushi, your mouth will go numb. Next, you’ll begin to feel dizzy, get a headache, and have nausea. Then you’ll begin to lose your ability to breathe. And before long, you’ll be paralyzed. You’ll need to be put on a respirator or you’ll die. And the odds are not in your favor, since 60% of people with fugu poisoning die.

Step 4: Get Help Right Away

You’re learning the info you need to survive, but using it is key to surviving. So if you’ve eaten a more common kind of fish sushi, and you feel any of these symptoms, get medical help right away. Watch out for stomach cramps. Next, you could have a fever, then diarrhea that contains blood. And remember, if you ate a lot of sushi, and the fish had high levels of mercury, you could feel burning in your throat and stomach. You also risk damaging your nervous system and your kidneys.

But if you’ve eaten a parasite like a tapeworm, you might not feel it right away. Over time though, you might lose your appetite. You could also feel week, tired, and lose weight. Can you guess what the next step is?

Step 5: Go to the Emergency Room

If you ate fugu sushi, once you feel your tongue is numb and you have nausea, your respiratory system will soon shut down. Being on a respirator for the next 24 hours is your only chance to survive. If you have mercury poisioning, you might need to be placed on intravenous fluids. And you may need to go through gastrointestinal decontamination to help remove the mercury. Knowing what you ate and how much are key pieces of information to give the medical staff.

Step 6: Avoid it

This is the radical step you’ve been waiting for. The easiest way to stay safe from bad sushi is to avoid it altogether. But you can continue enjoying sushi safely if you swap the raw fish for cooked ingredients. Just choose some delicious crabs, cooked crawfish, chicken, or smoked salmon. If the restaurant you’re going to is reputable and has a history of good quality food, you don’t have to worry too much.

And while consuming raw fish could be deadly for you, what if a fish decided to eat you? Fear not. We have a video about how not to become a fish’s next meal.Watch How to Survive Piranhah.