If you enjoy eating sushi from time to time, you might also wonder if you can safely offer it to your child without stress and fear. Today, I’d like to answer the question of whether children can eat sushi. I encourage you to read on.
What is Sushi?
If you’ve stumbled upon this by accident, you might not even know what sushi actually is. To avoid dullness and boredom, I’ll answer this question shortly and succinctly: sushi is vinegared rice served with cooked, marinated, or raw fish and can be enriched with various kinds of additives.
Is Sushi Healthy?
Sushi, like almost everything, has its pros and cons. It can be very healthy because, after all, rice and fish provide children with vitamins, minerals, protein, or omega-3 fatty acids. However, fish can also pose a risk because they may cause indigestion, stomach pains, or even parasites.
Children and Sushi
Let’s assume that sushi mainly consists of fish and rice. It’s worth noting that rice can be introduced into a child’s diet from the 5th month of life. Fish, on the other hand, can be introduced only after the 10th month. However, it’s important to note that children cannot eat raw fish. Therefore, when preparing sushi for a child, ensure that the fish used is not raw but baked or smoked, with salmon being a good option. There are also varieties of sushi such as sushi with salted fish, with vegetables, or sweet sushi that children can safely eat.
What to Watch Out For?
When ordering sushi for a child, pay special attention to the fish used in the dish. As I mentioned, you should avoid raw fish, and additionally, do not serve sushi with fish that are high in heavy metals. Their consumption can end very badly for the child, as we all know that some fish and seafood can contain mercury, lead, and other heavy metals. Therefore, when going out for sushi with a child, make sure to choose a restaurant that prepares dishes with the highest quality ingredients.
In conclusion, when visiting a Japanese restaurant, remember to also pay attention to the additives served with sushi. Children should not eat wasabi, soy sauce, squid, or shrimp.
Homemade or Restaurant?
One thing is certain, ordering sushi from a restaurant never gives you 100% certainty about the ingredients used in the dish. Unless the restaurant is run by someone you know well. If you decide to prepare sushi at home, you have the highest level of safety, knowing where and what ingredients you bought.