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Itsu bean and hijiki lunch roll

This year I have been eating a lot more Japanese food - mainly because I really like it but also because its good quality food. Itsu who have a takeaway stall outside my office provide me with excellent miso soup and what they call a lunch roll nearly every working day.The lunch roll is a tube of rice with different ingredients rolled up inside. Mostly I have ginger chicken - very spicy!
Since last week though I have purchased the Bean and Hijiki lunch roll and very satisfying it is. I was interested to know what hijiki is and looked it up on the web today and hijiki is a black seaweed finely sliced but I also to my horror read that hijiki contains inorganic arsenic that is known to add to the risk of people developing cancer.
I read this on the Food Standards Agency website - a UK government agency.

I have also pinged off a question to Itsu about the use of hijiki in their lunch rolls using the Itsu question form. Hopefully I will get a concise answer back as to the risks of eating Itsu's hijiki.

Update!

I got a quick email response from Glenn at Itsu :

Simon,

Thanks for your e-mail. Please rest assured we would not be serving
food with potential health dangerous. I know the FSA site well,
particularly the page you mention. The FSA tested five brands of
Hijiki, these are listed and include Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Tazaki
Foods etc. Based on reading this article, we took caution to have our
Hijiki brand independently tested. Results come back safe for human
consumption.

The product requires washing and cooking. The results shown on the site
do not take this into account either. Itsu washes, rinses several times
and steams it's hijiki to further ensure it's safety.

It is completely safe to eat, in fact I eat it all the time. The
flavour is delicious.

I hope this re-assures you?

Yes it does reassure me! I can continue to choose the Bean and Hijiki lunch roll for my lunch without any worries!

Posted by Simon at November 8, 2005 1:05 PM

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Comments

1 April 30, 2006 8:55 AM Ann

Can you tell me what brand(s) of hijiki available in the USA I can trust as not having [too much] arsenic? If anyone can be of help about this, please e-mail me. I think I have a problem from having eaten hijiki regularly.... We put it in our oatmeal every morning. If there is a safe brand I would like to know. Meanwhile I will be stopping hijiki altogether for the time being. I recently have been feeling bad with hair loss, kidney pain, and a passing bit of numbness in extremities. Stumbled across the arsenic- in-hijiki information by chance and think perhaps that explains the cause.