‘Fish fraud’: half of dishes served at Los Angeles sushi restaurants are not what you think they are

Next time you order halibut, red snapper or yellowfin tuna at a sushi restaurant in the Los Angeles area, you may want to ask for proof of what’s on your plate.

According to a four-year study published on Wednesday by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount University, nearly half of the fish served at more than two dozen highly-rated sushi restaurants in the city is mislabelled.

“Half of what we’re buying isn’t what we think it is,” said Paul Barber, a UCLA professor who led the study published in the journal Conservation Biology. “Fish fraud could be accidental, but I suspect that in some cases the mislabelling is very much intentional, though it’s hard to know where in the supply chain it begins.”

Demian Willette, a researcher and co-author of the study, said that while mislabelling of food is nothing new, what was surprising was that it would be so prevalent, especially in a food-conscious market like Los Angeles.

“We didn’t really expect that because Los Angeles is a very foody culture and in general people are very conscious about what they eat,” he said.

Willette said the study, conducted between 2012 and 2015, looked at 26 sushi restaurants that were highly rated on the reviewing sites Yelp and Zagat.

Biology students at UCLA were sent out to the restaurants over the four years to collect samples of 10 popular varieties of fish used for sushi. The samples were then tested for DNA.