Sushi is a Japanese word meaning vinegar rice. Sushi is a type of cuisine that combines vinegar and rice with raw and cooked fish, vegetables, tofu or seaweed. While there is no official diet suggesting that if you eat sushi you can lose weight, sushi can be a healthy, low-calorie meal.
About Weight Loss
The National Institutes of Health explains that to lose weight, you need to burn or eat fewer calories than you take in. To lose 1 lb., reports the American Academy of Family Physicians, you need to burn or eat 500 fewer calories each day. It is not recommended to lose more than 2 lbs. a week because you may just be shedding water weight or muscle instead of fat.
Sushi Nutrition Facts
The number of calories you should eat to lose weight is based on a variety of factors including your age, weight, height and gender. Linda B. Bobroff writes in a report about meal plans for the University of Florida Extension Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences that even when trying to drop pounds, females need to consume at least 1,200 calories and males should consume at least 1,600. You can safely abide by these guidelines when eating sushi. A California roll, with crab meat and avocado rolled in vinegar rice and seaweed has about 255 to 266 calories and 7 to 8.5 g of fat. A plain tuna roll has about 184 calories with 2 g of fat.
Rice
Dieting is about more than just dropping pounds. In 2010, a study published in the "Archives of Internal Medicine" by Qi Sun found that substituting whole grains like brown rice for white rice could reduce your risk for developing Type 2 diabetes. Additionally, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health found that you can even increase your chances of developing this kind of diabetes by eating five or more servings a week of white rice -- a staple of American sushi. These days, however, sushi restaurants and supermarket counters that sell sushi regularly offer brown rice. When it comes to fiber, minerals, vitamins, and healthy compounds reports a Harvard press release about the study, brown rice is superior to white.
Considerations
If your main goal is to count calories and lose weight, you should avoid sushi made with avocado, cream cheese, mayonnaise and ingredients that have been deep-fried. While you won't find these ingredients in authentic Japanese cuisine, North Americans have developed a taste for them and expect to see them on the menu. Tempura, which is served in Japanese restaurants alongside sushi, consists of fried foods like vegetables and shrimp. A shrimp tempura roll can have more than 500 calories and 21 g of fat. Sushi made using tuna and spicy mayo can have 290 calories and 11 g of fat.
Suggestions
Sticking with simple pieces of sushi and rolls that have a piece of fish, a vegetable or tofu along with brown rice is the best way to keep your calorie count to a minimum while still getting the nutrients you need to maintain a healthy diet. Tofu is a soy product. My Pyramid, a program for promoting healthy eat by the United States Department of Agriculture, suggests explains that tofu is a good source of protein and calcium.
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