Sushi

During my research on insects as food I noticed that many advocates of insects argued that insects could be ‘the new sushi’. Their idea was that while sushi was culturally unusual in the West until relatively recently it had nevertheless become highly popular, and so insects could follow this model to popularity as well. I thought this sounded slightly dubious, and decided to investigate. To my surprise there was, at that time, no scholarly account of how sushi had become established in the US. So I decided to write one myself. I found that sushi’s popularity was the result of a complex range of long-term processes rather than the achievement of a few charismatic entrepreneurs (although these people certainly helped), and that it built on the existing popularity of Japan and Japanese cuisine in the postwar US.