Sushi

[aro3n]

I've always wondered about this, is sushi good, bad, or okay for you. I saw somewhere that fat content is fairly high, but I heard from other people its good fats, and Calorie count is also fairly high. Can anyone demystify this for me?


Cheers!

[Nath]

I've always wondered about this, is sushi good, bad, or okay for you. I saw somewhere that fat content is fairly high, but I heard from other people its good fats, and Calorie count is also fairly high. Can anyone demystify this for me?


Cheers!

Sushi Calories

Note that those numbers are per roll, not per piece. The rice is, well, rice. The fillings are quite variable, of course, but that's to be expected. On the whole, most of the common types seem quite all right in moderation.

[Drake]

I find that a lot of Americanized rolls or specialty rolls (I live in America) are quite heavy on the sauce (high sugar and mayonnaise), and are the richest/least healthy options. Nothing wrong with the traditional rolls (just fish and rice).

@Nath thanks or the link. good info.

[Baza210]

It all depends on what the filler is.. the basic ingredients, ie Rice, Mirin [Rice Wine], and Nori [Seaweed] should have very little fat in them at all, but the filler can have high-fat ingredients such as Mayonnaise or Avocado.

[aro3n]

i thought avocado/ fish are good fats?

[Castro]

i thought avocado/ fish are good fats?

They are.
As far as I know, as long as there isn't a ton of sodium, sushi is pretty good.

[aro3n]

so basically avoid the thingslike "philly rolls" with added cream cheese..

[Ixaera]

I heart a nigiri
<33333333333

[clintonius]

Really, cream cheese isn't that bad for you, especially considering how little of it you'll get in sushi. Better to avoid dunking your rolls in massive amounts of soy sauce and suffering a heart attack from the stupefying amounts of sodium/MSG contained therein.

[Moo]

1) Good fat is still fat. If your main concern is your heart and/or cholesterol, then good fats trump bad fats. But all fats are things that sit on your hips so if your concern is weight loss any fat should be taken in moderation.

2) Sushi rice has a medium Glycemic Index. Foods with a high GI are broken down into glucose very quickly, which means a big energy dump into your cells and if you don't use up all this energy it will probably be stored as fat. Low GI foods release it very slowly, so you stay full up and have a more constant supply of energy - much better for weight loss.

Sushi isn't unhealthy but if you are trying to lose weight it should be an occasional treat would be my two cents.

[wirehead]

The nice part is that it's a lot of cuteness for not a lot of food. Also, prohibitively expensive to gorge yourself (which only works with some people)

Also, there's a slight but nonzero elevated risk of intestinal parasites. Especially with the cheap stuff. That's a definite health-minus.

[clintonius]

1) Good fat is still fat. If your main concern is your heart and/or cholesterol, then good fats trump bad fats. But all fats are things that sit on your hips so if your concern is weight loss any fat should be taken in moderation.

Given that your second point talked about the glycemic index, I'm surprised that you still believe that dietary fat = body fat. It doesn't. Rather than offer a pathetic explanation from my own limited knowledge on the subject, I refer you to this wonderfully detailed (and cited!) post. The tl;dr of it is that consuming dietary fat actually causes far less body fat gain than does consuming carbohydrates. Therefore, the statement that "all fats are things that sit on your hips" is simply not true when referring to dietary fat.

Also, the omega-3 fatty acids in fish contribute to heart health.

2) Sushi rice has a medium Glycemic Index. Foods with a high GI are broken down into glucose very quickly, which means a big energy dump into your cells and if you don't use up all this energy it will probably be stored as fat. Low GI foods release it very slowly, so you stay full up and have a more constant supply of energy - much better for weight loss.

I think you just looked at the sushi rice, which has a medium GI because it's white rice. Sushi as a whole is usually considered to be low GI. Link. But yes, it is certainly a good idea to emphasize the sushi that is primarily fish and go a bit easier on the rolls that are primarily white rice. That will help keep the GI of your sushi meal as low as possible.

As a further point in sushi's favor, the raw fish found in most sushi benefits from being just that: raw. The less a food is treated in heat (generally), the more nutritious it will be. That holds true with the ingredients used in sushi. More vitamins, more minerals, and more protein.

Oh, and sushi is just nummy as hell. Almost forgot that part.

[asad137]

As a further point in sushi's favor, the raw fish found in most sushi benefits from being just that: raw. The less a food is treated in heat (generally), the more nutritious it will be.

See, I'm no expert, but I have read that cooking foods actually increases the bioavailability of nutrients, and could very well be one of the advances in human development that allowed us to develop larger, more energy-consuming brains.

I don't have a citation, unfortunately, but I'll see if I can dig one up.

Asad

[clintonius]

I don't have a citation, unfortunately, but I'll see if I can dig one up.

Hmm, neither do I, now that I think about it.

*quickdraw!*

[asad137]

Well, here's one:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/0808 ... ution.html

In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, Khaitovich explained, thereby freeing up calories for our brains.

Asad

[Victoria Maddison]

Cooking and the method[7] used affects the level of vitamin and mineral retention. In some cases you're looking at a 30-50% loss[3][4][5][6] of certain vitamins, such as retinol, thiamine and ascorbic acid. However cooking can significantly increase the bio-availability of the food you eat, particularly dietary protein[8]. For example the bio-availability of the protein in a cooked egg is 77% greater than that of a raw egg[1].

It's not entirely black and white, as H. Watzke explains, "there is no simple relation between food processing and bioavailability. Processing can have a positive impact through separation or partitioning of minerals (enrichment), or through the destruction of inhibitors or, the beneficial complex formation between food components and metal ions, thereby enhancing their availability. However, the impact can also be negative by deactivating enzymes that degrade inhibitors or by generating insoluble metal compounds (e.g. oxidation, precipitation)." [2]

However this is mostly irrelevant from the western person's perspective as a healthy balanced diet should contain more than adequate levels of all necessary vitamins and minerals. It's more a question of what tastes better and how does one protect themselves from e.coli, listeria, salmonella and so on.

1. Pieter Evenepoel, Benny Geypens, Anja Luypaerts, Martin Hiele, Yvo Ghoos, and Paul Rutgeerts, Digestibility of Cooked and Raw Egg Protein in Humans as Assessed by Stable Isotope Techniques, The Journal of Nutrition Vol. 128 No. 10 October 1998, pp. 1716-1722
2. Heribert J. Watzke, Impact of Processing on Bioavailability Examples of Minerals in Foods, Trends in Food Science & Technology, Vol. 9 Iss. 8-9 August 1998, pp. 320-327
3. Faith Fenton, Donald K. Tressler and Charles G. King, Losses of Vitamin C during the Cooking of Peas, Journal of Nutrition Vol. 12 No. 3 September 1936, pp. 285-295
4. M.H. Lyimo, S. Nyagwegwe, A.P. Mnkeni, Investigations on the effect of traditional food processing, preservation and storage methods on vegetable nutrients: a case study in Tanzania, Plant-Foods-Hum-Nutr. 1991 Jan; 41(1): 53-7
5. O. Onayemi, O.A. Osibogun, O. Obembe, Effect of Different Storage and Cooking Methods on Some Biochemical, Nutritional and Sensory Characteristics of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp), Journal of Food Science Vol. 51 Iss. 1 August 2006, pp 153-156
6. V.A. Proctor, F.E. Cunningham, Composition of Broiler Meat as Influenced by Cooking Methods and Coating, Journal of Food Science, Vol. 48 Iss. 6, August 2006, pp. 1696-1699
7. D.E. Hudson, A.A. Dalal, P.A. Lachance, Retention of Vitamins in Fresh and Frozen Broccoli Prepared by Different Cooking Methods, Journal of Food Quality, Vol. 8 Iss. 1 May 2007, pp. 45-50
8. R. Bressani, V. Benavides, E. Acevedo, M.A. Ortiz, Changes in Selected Nutrient Contents and in Protein Quality of Common and Quality-Protein Maize During Rural Tortilla Preparation, Cereal Chem. Vol. 67 No. 6 1990 pp. 515-518

[Moo]

(1) I'm surprised that you still believe that dietary fat = body fat.
(2) The tl;dr of it is that consuming dietary fat actually causes far less body fat gain than does consuming carbohydrates.
(3) Therefore, the statement that "all fats are things that sit on your hips" is simply not true when referring to dietary fat.
(4) Also, the omega-3 fatty acids in fish contribute to heart health.
...
(5) Things about sushi, fish and rice

(1) I didn't say that. However the throwing around of jargon like "good fats" in the media has people not realising that seperate from hearth health, which is important, there is still the fact that even unsaturated fats are fats. Fats are sources of energy. Very concentrated sources of energy. Just because nuts are good sources of good fat doesn't mean it's going to do your weight any good to eat nothing but nuts for a week! This is the misconception I was addressing.
(2) All fats are sources of energy. Too much energy you don't expend leads to weight gain, which I shorthandedly referred to as "sitting on your hips".
(3) I disagree. All fats can contribute to weight gain when taken in excess; and we get a LOT of fats from our foods already, especially if you are eating a well balanced diet
(4) Yes, yes they do. However you don't need a lot and just calling it "good fat" and concentrating on heart health in a weight loss subforum may cause misconceptions about the fact that you should still try and control your overall fat intake (even good fats) if you want to lose weight (I tried to be very careful to seperate the heart health issue from the weight aspect, since I'm commenting on the latter).
(5) I forget not everyone doesn't like raw proteien like me, I was talking about maki almost exclusively and not mentioning that was a big oversight on my part. I make my own rolls and use cooked or vegetarian fillings.


This article from the NHS sums up what I meant to convey; that it's not black and white ("all fat is bad!" or "good fats! eat as much as you like!!"). Emphasise is mine.

Fat contains a lot of calories and most of us in the UK eat too much fat, which causes us to put on weight.
...
Cutting back on the total fat in our diet is a good idea for many of us but we also need to think about the type of fat we’re eating.

Here's another one I found, I don't know how trustworthy you consider goodtoknowdiets.com but their facts match up with everything else I've reading looking into this.

Each gram of fat provides nine calories of energy, compared with only four calories per gram of carbohydrates and proteins. So all fats, including the good ones, are loaded with calories and when eaten in excess, can be a hazard to the waistline. For example, a tablespoon of ‘good fat’ (monounsaturated fat, like olive oil) provides 100 calories, as does a tablespoon of ‘bad fat’ (saturated fats, like butter).
...
Nutrition experts advise consuming no more than 30 percent of calories from fat.

edit: the post you linked to was very long, but I just noticed that you yourself make the argument about how energy rich fat is, however your whole point in that post was regarding muscle building. I was addressing weight loss. Crossed purposes.

[clintonius]

Heh, I was about to reply here at length, and then realized how utterly I had derailed the thread, given that our discussion has turned completely into one about fat. (1)There isn't a whole helluva lot of fat in sushi to begin with -- generally about 30% or fewer of the calories come from fat, according to statistics from this page and a little reverse math fu from the converter found right here, and (2) it's "good" fat. You can lambaste me if you like for using that term, but it doesn't do a whole lot of good, considering that I think we agree that it's not good for you to eat too much of it. Just like it's not good to eat too much of anything. So folks, don't eat nothing but nuts sushi for a week.

Moo, I'll reply at length via PM. Basically, I agree with the notion that even good fats must be taken in moderation. I'd just argue that they don't cause nearly the weight-loss problems that simple carbs do.

@Victoria Maddison: thanks for the informative post. Because sushi is probably looked to more for a source of protein than vitamins, if the principle espoused in the egg example holds true across the board, I'll go ahead and retract my (terribly vague, now that I look at it) statement that sushi is more "nutritious" because it is generally raw.

[Moo]

Moo, I'll reply at length via PM. Basically, I agree with the notion that even good fats must be taken in moderation. I'd just argue that they don't cause nearly the weight-loss problems that simple carbs do.

You are of course more than welcome to and I enjoy a good informative discussion but I think you're right, we agree on the principle, we only disagreed on where the emphasis should be. It was just that I saw what I thought might be a dangerous misconception that because something's a "good fat" you needn't control intake.

i thought avocado/ fish are good fats?

They are.
As far as I know, as long as there isn't a ton of sodium, sushi is pretty good.

I don't challenge your assertion that unsaturated fats don't cause as big a problem as simple carbs, if I understand what you mean by simple carbs to be what I would class as high GI foods (otherwise please correct my ignorance in the PM).

[wirehead]

I think now's a good time to insert that, after all the food study and arguments, about the only thing that we do really know is that it's good to eat food. And a variety thereof.

There seems to be one set of good stuff in raw foods. Another set of good stuff in fermented foods. And yet another set in cooked foods.

Ever spend time with a dietician? They've got great stories of things people have done to themselves by trying to cut out "bad" foods.