Why is bluefin tuna so expensive

Otoro is the fattiest part of the tuna outside of the head and collar area. Narrator: This is the most expensive. Wilcox: The chutoro is getting around toward the side of the tuna, and it doesn't have the striations of fat, but it still has fat within the red of the meat, so you get a mix of fat and red. And then, akami which means, literally, red meat in Japanese, is the leanest part which you find more towards the center of the tuna closer to the backbone.

Narrator: Akami is the most common and cheapest part of the fish, but it's still more expensive than that can of albacore at your local market. Wilcox: When you're assessing the quality of the tuna, you wanna taste the red meat, the akami. It's a wild animal, so it tells you whether it had a good diet, whether it had a good life, and it got exercise, and it lived in clean waters, and was able to swim around a lot. So, a farm-raised tuna is, generally, force-fed sardines, and you can actually taste sardines in the fat of a farm-raised tuna.

Whereas a wild tuna has a varied diet, and has a much cleaner and milder flavor to the fat. Narrator: But for decades, wild bluefin tuna were over-fished in the Pacific, which was harming their population and making it more difficult to come by. However, more recently tighter controls on fishing have led to a resurgence in the population.

But they could still be better, Wilcox says. In fact, Wilcox avoids any Pacific bluefin that is not from Japan, and says you should too. Wilcox: If you eat Pacific bluefin, not specifically from Japan, then that's really irresponsible. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation.

Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. The fish has a fatty marbling which makes the meat from its belly incredibly prized for sushi.

Sushi expert and chef Derek Wilcox told Business Insider that Japan is simply better at handling the butchering of bluefin. It's not uncommon for bluefin caught off the United States coast to be sent to Japan before being exported to a sushi restaurant someplace else. This drives up the cost. To the uninformed, tuna might just be tuna and the idea of paying millions for a pound fish seems ludicrous. It's important to note, though, that the bluefin sushi roll you might get at a high-end sushi restaurant has very little in common with your mom's tuna salad recipe.

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