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Japanese Guts Are Made For Sushi

Posted by samzenpus on from the weed-eaters dept.

cremeglace writes "Americans don't have the guts for sushi. At least that's the implication of a new study, which finds that Japanese people harbor enzymes in their intestinal bacteria that help them digest seaweed, enzymes that North Americans lack. What's more, Japanese may have first acquired these enzymes by eating bacteria that thrive on seaweed in the open ocean."

4 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Am i missing something? by Daetrin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought that everyone started out with pretty much zero gut bacteria and acquire them based on what they eat. (And sometimes people lose all their gut bacteria from various medical treatments and have to work to restore them.)

    So the japanese end up with the bacteria/enzymes do digest sushi because... they eat a lot of sushi. Presumably anyone else could develop a colony of such bacteria/enzymes by also eating a lot of sushi?

    That would mean the division isn't whether you're Japanese or American or something else. It's just whether or not you eat a lot of sushi.

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    1. Re:Am i missing something? by Misanthrope · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Some of your gut microflora and fauna comes from your mom during the birthing process, others from breastfeeding and some from what you eat on a regular basis. This is interesting because the genes are transferred supposedly from the bugs living on seaweed to the bugs living in your gut, letting the same species of gut bugs to develop an ability to digest seaweed better.

  2. Ammo for Racism by eheien · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just what we need, more "Japanese are unique" idiocy to justify racism and discrimination in Japan. So far we've heard that "Japanese intestines are longer, so Japanese can't eat foreign beef", "Japanese brains are unique, so only Japanese people can speak the Japanese language." and so on, all of which are supported by pseudo-scientific studies such as this one.

    This sort of incomplete research just feeds the view of racial uniqueness (and superiority) among Japanese and justifies their racism and discrimination against others.

  3. Bowel obstruction by AlpineR · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Speaking of cold, dead digestive tracts: A few years ago, I got terribly ill while on vacation. Loss of appetite, waves of tremendous abdominal cramps, and vomiting. My intestines had plugged up and it took some intervention to get them moving again.

    I put some of the blame on a sushi lunch I ate that day. I'd eaten sushi often before, but this restaurant used a lot more seaweed in the dishes than I was accustomed to. Even as I was eating, I had second thoughts about whether what I was putting into my mouth was actually edible. But I figured it seemed strange to me only because that Japanese restaurant was more authentic than the Americanized sushi places where I usually dined.

    Now I wonder whether that seaweed would be edible to Japanese guts, but truly was inedible to mine.