Greetings everyone!

It has been a loooooong time and what a year 2020 has been so far! We hope you are all staying safe and healthy. We have been very lucky here in Australia to see the COVID-19 situation mostly under control. With restrictions slowly easing, we can’t wait to see our professors back in action, bringing you our favourite science experiments and creations.

Until then, here are some fun science facts about one of our favourite foods — sushi — to celebrate International Sushi Day! (June 18th).

• The popular sushi dish California roll was invented in 1970s in Vancouver by sushi chef Hidekazu Tojo. The idea of the inside-out sushi was to hide the seaweed and raw fish, which many customers at the time were too afraid to try.

• Sushi started out in Japan as a way to preserve fish as early as 300-400 BCE. With no refrigerators, fish packed with rice would undergo a year-long fermentation to prevent them from spoiling.

• Fermentation occurs when good bacteria digest carbohydrates, such as starches found in rice and convert them into acid, like lactic acid. The build-up of acid changes the pH of the rice, making it hard for harmful bacteria to grow.

• In modern day sushi, the rice is not longer fermented. To achieve an acidic taste that people grew to love, vinegar and sugar are added to the rice instead.

The sense of taste

There are 5 basic tastes the human tongue can detect: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami.

• Umami is described as savory, giving us that distinct meaty, cheesy flavour. The compound responsible for umami-ness is glutamate, which is found in high abundance in foods such as seaweed, seafood, cheese, meat, soy sauce, tomato and mushroom.

• The fish used in sushi contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to provide many health benefits.

• The bright colour of salmon meat comes mainly from the fish’s diet of crustaceans such as krill, whose shells contain a pigment called astaxanthin that turns their muscles pink.

That’s it for now! We will back soon with more fun science facts!

Stay safe and don’t forget to wash your hands!