Expensive tuna is the new cigarettes. A breathless Times report finds that the tuna sushi from high-class restaurants, the kind of places you might take a second date, could be deadly. What exactly high mercury does is unclear, but it causes health problems, and health problems causes death. Death is the worst.

But in a nice twist, ghetto tuna sushi from supermarkets is actually healthier than the expensive stuff.

Tuna samples from the Manhattan restaurants Nobu Next Door, Sushi Seki, Sushi of Gari and Blue Ribbon Sushi and the food store Gourmet Garage all had mercury above one part per million, the “action level” at which the F.D.A. can take food off the market. (The F.D.A. has rarely, if ever, taken any tuna off the market.) The highest mercury concentration, 1.4 parts per million, was found in tuna from Blue Ribbon Sushi. The lowest, 0.10, was bought at Fairway.

Damn, the rich can't get a break these days.

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