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Are You a Foodie Risk Taker?
Puffer Fish or “Fugu”
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Steven Mundahl, co-author of The Alchemy of Authentic Leadership (Balboa Press, 2013) says that individuals, who tend to ignore the potential cost of making a failed decision may be more prone to make dangerous decisions, when compared to individuals, who review all of the possible outcomes and consider the results if the worst-case scenario occurs.
As an example, the Puffer Fish, aka ‘fugu’ is a delicacy in some Japanese sushi restaurants. The fish is extraordinarily expensive and requires that only specially trained, licensed chefs may prepare the fish. According to some articles, the pass rate for chefs completing the test is only 25%.
Fugu (Puffer Fish)
Failure to properly prepare fugu has numerous consequences for the eater and ranges from numbness to the tongue and lips, nausea, vomiting, paralysis of the face and extremities, respiratory distress, convulsions, cardiac arrhythmia, and in some cases, death. The culprit is a deadly poison found in the puffer fish, tetrodotoxin.
Most of us have probably ingested a little mold from a hunk of stale cheese, with few adverse effects, or have suffered the unpleasant intestinal consequences of eating the contents of a container of egg salad at the back of the fridge that we could have sworn we made just a day ago. However, most of the time, the consequences occur inadvertently and are simply the result of inattention.
Now, knowing all of this, are you a foodie risk taker? Would you eat fugu, or for that matter, any other potentially life-threatening food, knowing the risk? If so, better make sure your chef is one of the 25% and got A+ on the exam! If any readers out there have eaten fugu and survived to tell the tale, please share your experience with us!
Music – Title Theme from the movie “Jaws”. Music by John Williams
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