Here’s the Trending team’s main character of the week: It’s wormgate.
Celebrity food reviewer Keith Lee tried a sushi place in Seattle recently. Viewers noticed what appeared to be a worm on the fish that he was eating. It was likely a parasite.
Lee himself is fine, but one of his fans who ate at the same sushi place in Seattle got sick. She was hospitalized for a week, according to her boyfriend‘s viral video. He said that she got E. coli from the sushi place.
“So we’re not posting this as a lie to gain clout or anything... We’re just saying if you have it be careful,” he said.
This got the internet thinking.
One expert, who handles the wholesale of fish at many sushi restaurants, pointed blame toward the original restaurant and not the batch of fish that it sold to customers. According to her, all sushi should be frozen by handlers before it’s sold. This removes any chances of parasitic infections.
Maybe you know this. I sure didn’t—and I love sushi.
That got us thinking more broadly.
Does it make more sense to buy frozen fish? Because parasites and worms?
This week the internet at large also learned that most Alaskan-caught fish sold in supermarkets is then sent to China where it’s processed and sent back to the United States. It’s more efficient to do that than it is to pay people more money to filet freshly caught seafood stateside.
Then again, you don’t eat sockeye salmon raw. You cook it. So… that would remove all parasites.
I think.
Googles it.
OK, yes of course, duh. According to an AI-powered summary that pulls from all sorts of reputable content across the internet—and surely a couple of not-that-reputable sites—yes, cooking fish at 140° Fahrenheit ensures that all potential parasites are destroyed.
Wormgate proved itself a fairly open-and-shut case in the court of public opinion.
The restaurant in Seattle which has now closed its doors likely mishandled a batch of fish. Despite the eater’s initial public denial—which blamed the apparent moving worm Lee was eating on the manner in which he held the chopsticks.
As for Keith Lee, I just looked at his TikTok page and he sent well-wishes to the woman in the hospital. In an update from this week, he wished the shuttered restaurant well, denied that his chopstick maneuvers had anything to do with the worm, and called on more accountability from the restaurant.
We’ve reached out to him as well.
I guess the question is, the next time that we are pondering H-E-B sushi for dinner, will we? There are so many other (cooked) options out there that it seems like a needless risk to take.
Life in the news business means that every week we’re taught a lesson about the hidden dangers of everyday products. It’s an attention economy, after all, these stories are always a useful log to throw on the web traffic fire. And while I hate to be reactionary and paranoid, this week I chose a Whataburger run instead.
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