There are almost 4,000 sushi restaurants in the U.S., and the Japanese dish continues to gain popularity, even with kids.
If your child is one who does like sushi, its important to be safe. The FDA recommends that children under 5 dont consume raw fish or shellfish, and Susan Mitchell, PhD, RDN, LDN, FAND, agrees.
In children, their immune system is not completely developed until theyre about 5 years old. So if a child younger than 5 eats raw fish and gets food poisoning, it could really be catastrophic, Mitchell told Ivanhoe.
Eating cooked sushi is the best option at a young age.
Sushi in itself, if its using lean fish and vegetables and avocado, can be very healthy, she said.
Ryan Leto, Executive Chef Partner at Roys Restaurant in Tampa, believes cooking sushi at home is a good way to introduce children to healthy eating.
Were going to be demoing our shrimp and avocado roll, Leto told Ivanhoe.
First thing youre going to do is take your soy paper, which is an alternative to the seaweed that you would usually use, explained Joshua Vandenberg, sushi chef at Roys Restaurant in Tampa.
Keep your fingers wet because the sushi rice can be sticky.
Take a ball of rice, a little bit smaller than a baseball, and you would spread it out across the top, continued Vandenberg.
Lay the avocado down across the soy paper and then the fully cooked shrimp.
Were just going to fold it over and make it touch on that backside, and then come up, and roll it all the way over, Vandenberg continued.
Once everythings on there, pat the ends, and sprinkle sesame seeds, and make sure an adult does the cutting.
Anything you make at home and you get your family involved in the kitchen, mix tradition, is a wonderful way to bring the family around the table, Mitchell said.
Tuna is considered to be one of the easiest fish to digest and is normally safe for children. Like any seafood, beware of consuming too much mercury. Raw shellfish is considered the most dangerous to eat because its most likely to be contaminated.
