**10 Fish I Would NEVER Eat After 38 Years Behind the Counter — #2 Is in Your Kitchen Right Now — Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/fish-never-eat-38-years-behind-counter-kitchen/ Fisherman Sal Rizzo counts down 10 fish he refuses to eat after 38 years at the counter, covering ciguatera, escolar, shark, king mackerel, and raw wild fish, with safer alternatives for each. ## Key Takeaways - Cooking does not eliminate ciguatera, escolar wax, or many fish hazards; source and species matter more than preparation. - Larger, longer-lived predator fish generally carry the most mercury and should be avoided, especially by pregnant women and children. - Smaller, lower-trophic alternatives like mahi mahi, Atlantic mackerel, and albacore offer similar flavor with lower risk. - Ask fishmongers and sushi chefs to name the exact species before purchasing or ordering. ## What the video covers - Sal Rizzo, a seafood counter veteran of 38 years, counts down 10 fish he will not eat, pairing each refusal with a safer substitute. - Reef fish such as barracuda, large grouper, and amberjack can carry ciguatera toxin, which heat, freezing, and soaking cannot remove; mahi mahi, wahoo, and yellowfin tuna are suggested instead. - Escolar, sold as white tuna or butterfish, contains indigestible wax that causes digestive distress; yellowtail (hamachi) or albacore are recommended. - Shark accumulates high mercury levels over long lifespans and retains urea that turns to ammonia, causing a strong smell; mahi mahi is the suggested alternative. - King mackerel carries far more mercury than small Atlantic mackerel, and Florida restricts its fishermen from eating large ones; Atlantic or Spanish mackerel are recommended. - Raw wild fish can carry parasites such as anisakis worms, so freezing or cooking is advised before eating. - Mercury enters the ocean from airborne pollution, concentrating up the food chain in larger, longer-lived predators. - The host promotes his channel and frames the list as practical advice from direct trade experience. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction: Fish I Refuse to Eat 2. 04:14 #10 Barracuda and Reef Fish (Ciguatera) 3. 08:32 #9 Escolar Disguised as White Tuna 4. 18:38 #8 Shark and Mercury 5. 26:26 #7 King Mackerel 6. 33:07 #6 Raw Wild Fish and Parasites 7. 38:20 Recap and Closing Answers ## Questions about this video Why does the speaker say barracuda and large reef fish are dangerous? They can carry ciguatera, a toxin produced by algae that accumulates up the reef food chain. Larger reef hunters hold the highest doses, and cooking, freezing, or soaking does not remove it. What is escolar and why is it controversial? Escolar is a deep-water fish often sold as white tuna or butterfish. It stores an indigestible wax that causes digestive upset, and it is banned in some countries such as Japan and Italy. What fish does the speaker recommend instead of king mackerel? He recommends Atlantic mackerel, sometimes called Boston mackerel, or Spanish mackerel, which are much smaller and carry far less mercury than king mackerel. ## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A Three of the fish on this list will make you sick no matter how long you cook them. 00:12 Speaker A Heat does not touch what is in them. 00:20 Speaker A Neither does your freezer. 00:28 Speaker A And one of the three has no smell, no taste, and no look to warn you. 00:34 Speaker A These are 10 fish I will not eat. 00:47 Speaker A I sold every one of them across the counter for 38 years. 00:59 Speaker A And I stopped putting them on my own plate. 01:07 Speaker A One at a time, each for a reason I can show you. 01:19 Speaker A Four are about mercury. 01:29 Speaker A The other six are on no government chart at all. 01:42 Speaker A I'm going to count down from 10. 01:48 Speaker A And for every fish I refuse, you get the one I eat in its place. 02:01 Speaker A So nobody leaves here with a shorter shopping list. 02:11 Speaker A Number two is in your kitchen as you listen to this. 02:23 Speaker A And most households eat it every week. 02:36 Speaker A Number one is sold as the healthy choice at nearly every seafood counter in the country. 02:52 Speaker A Number 10, barracuda and the big reef fish that hunt beside it. 03:04 Speaker A You will not find barracuda at your grocery store. 03:18 Speaker A You find it on vacation: the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, a grill on a beach, a charter captain handing you a bag of fillets, a menu that says catch of the day. 03:30 Speaker A The trouble starts with a microscopic algae that grows on coral reefs. 03:45 Speaker A Small fish graze on it. 03:57 Speaker A Bigger fish eat the small fish. 04:09 Speaker A At every step, the poison that algae makes is passed up and stored, and the animal at the top of a reef carries years of it. 04:27 Speaker A The illness is called ciguatera, and it is the most common fish poisoning in the tropics. 04:38 Speaker A This is why it opens a list of fish I will not eat. 04:48 Speaker A You cannot cook it out. 04:53 Speaker A You cannot freeze it out, smoke it out, or soak it out. 05:04 Speaker A The fish looks perfect, smells clean, and tastes fine. 05:14 Speaker A A few hours after dinner, your stomach turns over. 05:25 Speaker A And a day later comes the part people do not forget. 05:34 Speaker A Tingling in the lips and the fingertips, and a reversal of hot and cold, where a glass of ice water feels as if it is burning your hand. 05:47 Speaker A For some people, that goes on for weeks. 05:53 Speaker A For an unlucky few, months. 06:06 Speaker A The fish to worry about are the big reef hunters. 06:20 Speaker A Barracuda above all, then very large grouper, large amberjack, hogfish, and any snapper the size of a suitcase. 06:34 Speaker A The rule in the islands is a simple one. 06:44 Speaker A The bigger the reef fish, the bigger the dose. 06:58 Speaker A What I eat in its place on the same vacation: fish that live out in open water and never fed on a reef. 07:08 Speaker A Mahi mahi, wahoo, yellowfin tuna. 07:21 Speaker A If I want a reef fish, I want a small one. 07:31 Speaker A A snapper that fits on a dinner plate, cooked whole. 07:39 Speaker A And I never eat the head, the liver, or the roe of any tropical fish, because that is where the poison collects. 07:52 Speaker A If you would rather hear this from a man who sold the fish than from somebody reading a chart, subscribe to Salizo. 08:05 Speaker A Nobody bills you for it. 08:19 Speaker A And whatever else I know about that seafood case will reach you ahead of your next trip to the store. 08:31 Speaker A Number nine, you have probably never seen its real name, and you may have eaten it anyway. 08:41 Speaker A On a sushi menu, it is called white tuna, sometimes super white tuna, sometimes butterfish, and in Hawaii, walu. 08:50 Speaker A It is a snow-white slice, very soft, very rich, and it melts on the tongue like a pat of butter. 08:54 Speaker A People order a second round of it. 09:05 Speaker A The animal is called escolar, and it is not a tuna of any kind. 09:16 Speaker A It is a deep-water fish that cannot digest the waxy oil in the things it eats. 09:20 Speaker A So it stores that wax in its own flesh. 09:26 Speaker A About a fifth of the weight of that silky white slice is a wax your body cannot break down either. 09:36 Speaker A So your body does the only thing it can. 09:45 Speaker A It sends it straight through, somewhere between half an hour and a day and a half after the meal. 09:53 Speaker A And I will leave the description there, except to say that it arrives without warning. 10:02 Speaker A This is the second fish that cooking does nothing for. 10:14 Speaker A Seared, grilled, or raw, the wax is the same. 10:27 Speaker A It is not a poison, and it does no lasting harm. 10:38 Speaker A But Japan banned the sale of this fish in 1977, and Italy does not allow it either. 10:51 Speaker A In this country, it is legal. 11:00 Speaker A When DNA testers from a conservation group checked sushi sold as white tuna some years back, more than eight out of 10 samples turned out to be escolar. 11:11 Speaker A The places that serve it honestly keep the portion under 6 ounces. 11:22 Speaker A And at that size, most diners are fine. 11:32 Speaker A I do not gamble on a slice of fish. 11:41 Speaker A What I order in its place: for that rich, pale, buttery bite, I ask for yellowtail, which the menu calls hamachi, or real albacore, which is pink-beige, never paper white. 11:52 Speaker A And before I order anything called white tuna, I ask one question. 12:04 Speaker A What fish is it? 12:17 Speaker A A good sushi bar answers in one word. 12:29 Speaker A Number eight, shark. 12:42 Speaker A Mako, thresher, blacktip, sold as thick boneless steaks that look a good deal like swordfish and cost a little less. 12:55 Speaker A Two reasons. 13:09 Speaker A The first is mercury, and I will explain it once so it covers every fish that follows. 13:23 Speaker A Mercury reaches the sea from the air, much of it from burning coal, and the tiniest living things in the water take it up. 13:37 Speaker A A small fish eats those. 13:48 Speaker A A bigger fish eats a thousand small fish and keeps all of their mercury. 13:57 Speaker A It binds to the meat itself, so it cannot be trimmed off with the fat, and it cannot be cooked away. 14:04 Speaker A The longer a fish lives and the higher it hunts, the more it holds. 14:17 Speaker A A shark lives for decades and eats everything. 14:25 Speaker A On the government's table of mercury and seafood, shark averages close to one part per million. 14:36 Speaker A Shrimp on the same table is about a hundredth of that. 14:43 Speaker A The second reason is one you can smell. 14:56 Speaker A A shark does not get rid of its waste the way other fish do. 15:09 Speaker A It keeps urea in its blood. 15:19 Speaker A When the animal dies, that urea begins turning into ammonia. 15:24 Speaker A If the boat did not bleed it and bury it in ice within minutes, the meat carries a sharp smell like a bottle of window cleaner, and no soak in milk or lemon takes it all the way out. 15:37 Speaker A And a shark is slow to replace. 15:50 Speaker A A female mako is around 18 years old before she has her first pups. 16:02 Speaker A Since 2022, American boats in the Atlantic have not been allowed to keep a single shortfin mako. 16:14 Speaker A What I eat in its place for a thick steak on the grill: mahi mahi. 16:25 Speaker A Firm, sweet, no bones, and it carries less than a fifth of the mercury. 16:32 Speaker A Number seven, king mackerel, kingfish. 16:46 Speaker A If you live in the South, this one is on my list because of a single word, mackerel. 16:52 Speaker A People hear that mackerel is one of the best fish a person can eat, full of the good oils and low on the food chain. 17:04 Speaker A And that is true of the small one. 17:18 Speaker A Atlantic mackerel is about a foot long, lives fast, and carries almost no mercury at all. 17:32 Speaker A The king is a different animal with the same last name. 17:44 Speaker A It runs four and a half feet long. 17:59 Speaker A It can outweigh a 10-year-old child. 18:11 Speaker A It hunts other fish along the Gulf and up the Atlantic coast, and it can live past 20 years. 18:21 Speaker A On that government table, king mackerel carries about 15 times the mercury of the little Atlantic mackerel. 18:36 Speaker A It sits on the short list of fish that pregnant women and young children are told to skip entirely, right beside shark. 18:47 Speaker A The state of Florida goes further for its own fishermen. 18:52 Speaker A Its health department tells them not to eat any king mackerel longer than 39 inches. 19:06 Speaker A Not less of it, none. 19:17 Speaker A It is sold as steaks and smoked into fish dip all along the Gulf Coast. 19:24 Speaker A If the sign or the menu says mackerel and stops there, ask which one. 19:40 Speaker A My trade: Atlantic mackerel, sometimes sold as Boston mackerel, whole or in fillets. 19:51 Speaker A Spanish mackerel when I can get a small one. 20:03 Speaker A Broil either one skin side up with salt and lemon until the skin blisters. 20:08 Speaker A It is the same rich flavor people want from a king, for a fraction of the price, and I can have it twice a week. 20:22 Speaker A Number six is a way of eating fish more than a single fish. 20:32 Speaker A Raw wild fish that has never been through a hard freeze. 20:45 Speaker A A friend comes back from a fishing trip with salmon or halibut or cod caught that morning. 20:54 Speaker A Somebody says, "It is so fresh, let us slice it thin and eat it raw." 21:08 Speaker A Or they make ceviche and believe the lime juice is cooking it. 21:19 Speaker A Wild fish carry parasites. 21:25 Speaker A That is no scandal. 21:35 Speaker A That is the ocean. 21:50 Speaker A The common one is a thin pale worm, coiled like a watch spring, smaller than a dime. 22:03 Speaker A On a cutting table, we lifted them out of wild cod and wild salmon with the point of a kn 22:14 Speaker A I eat them. I enjoy them. And I do not eat two of them in the same week. Do fish oil capsules carry mercury? Very little. Mercury clings to the meat of the fish. And the oil is refined. 22:24 Speaker A Besides, can a blood test show mercury? It can. And if you have eaten swordfish or albaore several times a week for years, it is a reasonable thing to raise at your next checkup. The level falls by itself once the fish changes. So here 22:38 Speaker A are the 10 one last time. Barracuda and the big reef hunters. The white tuna that is not a tuna shark. King mackerel. 22:47 Speaker A Raw wild fish that never saw a hard freeze. The peppery steak. The trophy from a river with an advisory on it. The open pack of locks. The white can. and swordfish. If this took even one of those off your table, subscribe to Sal 23:02 Speaker A Rizzo. That is how I learn a list like this was worth writing and how the following one finds its way to you. Then leave me a number in the comments. Which of the 10 have you eaten in the past 23:12 Speaker A month? The number alone is enough. My guess is that number two wins by a mile and I would like to see whether I am right. 10 fish out of the several hundred that people eat. I took 10 away. 23:21 Speaker A The rest of the sea is still yours. Topics: seafood safety ciguatera mercury in fish escolar king mackerel shark raw fish parasites fish selection seafood counter healthy seafood Study this video - [Flashcards from this video](https://sozai.app/tools/ai-flashcard-generator/?from=transcript&id=83345) - [Quiz on this video](https://sozai.app/tools/quiz-generator/?from=transcript&id=83345) Free, made by AI from this transcript. No signup. --- This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/fish-never-eat-38-years-behind-counter-kitchen/ — the same content, without the markup. Published by SozAI (https://sozai.app). Reuse and quotation are allowed with attribution and a link back. 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