I went for acupuncture once. I didn’t like it; the room was cold and I just wanted to put on a sweater but, since my back was peppered with needles, I had to lie there and shiver. I suppose it would be different if I were a cold-blooded fish… which brings me to today’s topic: Fish acupuncture or, as it’s called in Japanese, kaimin katsugyo, is an acupuncture-style technique that helps sushi chefs serve the freshest fish possible even if their kitchen is located as far inland as Montreal or Chicago.
Here’s how it works. Needles are inserted into live fish to render them paralyzed and senseless. Sarah Staples explains the process in a recent Globe and Mail article:
“An acupunctured fish first falls into a sort of coma: It is brain-dead but can breathe weakly, and its central nervous functions continue during most of the overnight flight to Canada.
The fish dies in transit after about 12 hours, as oxygen reserves supplied by a saltwater-soaked padded envelope are depleted. But for several hours more, its flesh behaves as if it were still alive, the company says. In essence, the fish has become a zombie, existing in a twilight state between life and death, its normal processes of cellular decomposition arrested by those strategic pinpricks.”
If I’d read this story on April 1st or in a less reputable publication, I’d think I was being put on. I guess I grew up hearing too many horror stories about nasty people putting needles into Halloween candy, cause it just seems weird to me to put needles into food. What do you think? Is this freshness innovation weird and unnecessary or wonderfully clever?
