Walk into any sushi restaurant these days and you'll be bombarded with choices. From classic bluefin tuna, hamachi, and unagi, to maybe some new varieties of fish you've never heard of, a night of dining omakase can be a real adventure. One thing you're probably never going to see in your next sushi roll, however, is wild-caught salmon.
While farm-raised salmon gets a bit of a bad rap sometimes, it's actually much safer to eat raw than wild-caught fish because of the danger of contracting parasites. Farm-raised salmon is usually fed a diet of pellets, while farm-raised fish can eat whatever they want in the wild, plus they move from salt to freshwater, so there is a big risk that they can carry tapeworms. Remember that sushi salmon is served basically raw, so anything living in the salmon can be passed on to you if the food isn't cooked, so in this case, sushi chefs prefer to go with farm-raised options to be on the safe side.
Of course, salmon farming is not an exact science when it comes to preventing parasites, it just lowers the risk of infection. However, one study found that farm-raised salmon showcased no infections whatsoever, while its wild-caught counterpart showed a 65-100% parasite infection rate. Despite this, sushi salmon is almost always frozen before it's served, which makes it a lot safer to eat than a fish that's been plucked right out of the water.
Most salmon is frozen to be safe While it's nice to believe that the sushi on your plate was taken out of the .