Friday, July 18, 2014

3961 Most embarrassing moment, fish warning

Friday, July 18, 2014

A frequent challenge is to tell folks about your most embarrassing moment.

Yeah, I've had a few, but mostly I don't embarrass easily.  I shrug stuff off, especially if it's a momentary thing.  Like, who cares.  So until I a few years ago, I couldn't really think of one worth mentioning.

And then one day I went with a friend to a show in NYC.  She knew a lot of the dancers.  We drove downriver (from the country house), located the place, parked the car, and then went to a restaurant near the venue.  We had sushi.

Bad idea.

A little while later we were standing in front of the theater, and I had a burst of diarrhea.  No warning whatsoever.  It's not even like I felt like I had to release some gas or something.  There was just suddenly an awful feeling in my underwear.  Just bloop, and it was there.

In the ladies' room, I cleaned me up as best I could, washed up my panties and tossed them in the trash (I think, although in my panic I may have rolled them in paper towels and stuck them in my purse in case I had to show a doctor - it was the strangest, uh, output, I'd ever seen).  A little had got on the crotch of my slacks, so I washed that, too, and spent the rest of the evening with a wet crotch.  But the worst was, I'm sure, the smell.  My friend assured me it was ok, but I know that the smell of feces is strong and permeates.

I sat there in the audience sure I smelled like a dirty diaper, and tried not to get too close to anyone at the afterparty.  Driving home, my friend didn't open the car windows, so I don't know.

But that has to be the most embarrassing several hours of my entire life.  And it wasn't just about me.  I'm sure I must have embarrassed my friend, too, and that felt even worse.  After all, she brought me.

-------------------------------------

Here we are, several years later, and I've found out what happened.

There's a fish called escolar.  It's often sold in restaurants, listed on a menu as "white tuna".  Escolar is very oily, which makes it taste especially good, some people love it.  But most people suffer bouts of oily diarrhea (often described as "leakage") within an hour of eating it.  It is banned in several countries.
"Typically, "white tuna" refers to albacore, the stuff you find in cans of StarKist, Bumble Bee, or Chicken of the Sea branded tunas here in the United States. But according to a Boston Globe report from 2011 (recounted by ABC News as the Globe has a wonky paywall), there's a good chance -- a very good chance -- you're getting something else instead. Every single one of the 23 types of white tuna they tested turned out to be escolar, a cheaper alternative to tuna.

And the word "alternative" is used lightly -- because escolar is not really an acceptable one. Not only is escolar not tuna, it's probably not something you want to be eating a lot of. Escolar is often referred to as the "Ex-lax fish" because eating too much of it -- more than six ounces -- tends to afflict the feasting customer with a bad case of the runs. That's probably not the after-dinner experience you're after when you order the tuna.

From http://nowiknow.com/its-fishy/ by dan lewis.

It was the damn sushi, and the FDA says the restaurant should not have served it as tuna.  I doubt that I had more than six ounces, but maybe I'm just one of those hypersensitive folks.

For some horror stories, search for "escolar diarrhea".
.

2 comments:

~~Silk said...

P.S. The dangerous fish sold as "white tuna" is very white, like lobster meat white. As long as what you're getting is less than white, like the tan we're used to seeing in canned tuna, you're ok.

Lisa :-] said...

One more good reason NOT to eat sushi... ;)