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Do you like eating raw seafood? It’s not new to us that the Japanese and Koreans love to eat raw seafood as part of their everyday meal. I guess some of us experienced eating at Japanese or Korean restaurants as I did. I tried a Japanese dish called sushi which highlights some slices of raw tuna or salmon prepared with rice, some rolled and some in bite-sized pieces, kim bap being its Korean version.
All of us agree to the fact that the softer the food is, the better we like it. Well of course, it depends on the type of food. If it’s vegetables you don’t want it overcooked, unlike with meat, we want it tender and melts in the mouth. Two of the reasons why we like food to be in the right texture and doneness are, we get to digest them easily and it’s more enjoyable to eat. But what if your food fights back and doesn’t want to be eaten and stands its ground until the end.
I can’t imagine how a person will react if someone serves or dares him to eat a live baby octopus. Will it be palatable for him? Well, it’s a bit gross for me. I would not dare to try. But look at these diners on the video. They seem to love eating live octopus. But one important question comes to our mind. Is it safe? Let’s see.
Eating live seafood such as fish, crabs, oyster, baby octopus, and baby shrimps or what have you, is so popular in some countries, especially in South East Asia. Let’s take for example India where sardine eating is done in their belief that sardines cure asthma. They do it annually in their fish medicine festival.
The octopus is a valued dish all over Asia, and it’s esteemed to be a delicacy that is eaten alive mainly by Koreans and the Japanese. It’s normally served to special guests on important dinners.
Biologists say that eating raw seafood is not advisable for the very reason that they sometimes carry tapeworms or some other parasitic organisms. In the case of eating live octopus or sannak ji, there's a big risk of choking because of the octopus’ tentacles that tend to cling on to a person’s throat in the process of swallowing. The tentacles’ suction cups resist the swallowing, thereby blocking the air passage which could cause instant death to a diner. But there were lucky ones that nearly choked to death that still managed to have made it. Thanks to the heroic restaurant staff that used long chopsticks to push the octopus down to the esophagus that saved the diners’ lives. To many, it’s just for fun, but to some it’s their last meal.
It’s always recommended that you chew sannak ji thoroughly before swallowing it. That way you rid yourself of possible choking. Baby octopi are basically eaten whole as they are carefully tangled up on a chopstick for easy swallowing, but the larger ones are cut up into bite-sized pieces and eaten while still squirming around.
