How Fugu Works

Fugu is a dish in Japan made from pufferfish. Prepared improperly it can kill you. This video will help you understand how it works:

Eating Poison Fish

From the video:

The Tiger Fugu has enough toxin to kill 30 people. The toxin itself, to give you an idea, is 1,000 times stronger than Cyanide.

One milligram of the poison (tetrodotoxin) is enough to kill a person by paralysis. To prepare an edible dish, the key is to eliminate all of the parts of the fish that contain the poison (especially the skin) and eat the untainted parts. Chefs are licensed to ensure that they know how to prepare a non-fatal meal.

The obvious question: why would people want to eat something that is potentially fatal? Prepared by licensed chefs, the fish is considered generally safe to eat. So perhaps it is like an amusement park ride: thrilling, with a very small risk of death. As this article puts it: “some highly trained chefs include a tiny bit of the toxin when they serve fugu. The toxin will create a prickly, numb feeling on the tongue.”