Adults who have tried sushi

It appears that as Americans have gradually developed a taste for raw fish arranged on small wooden boards, they have simultaneously become better at not dying in swimming pools, which is either a profound statement about the civilising influence of Japanese cuisine or the universe's way of reminding us that correlation is basically just pattern-seeking with a spreadsheet. The data moves in almost perfect inverse lockstep from 2005 to 2021, as if every new sushi enthusiast came with a small, invisible lifeguard attached. One wonders if the fish somehow knows.

But here's where it gets properly interesting: both trends are almost certainly riding the same invisible escalator of demographic and economic change. Sushi adoption soared as supermarket refrigeration improved, incomes rose, and younger, more affluent populations clustered in cities—the exact same populations that invested in better pool safety infrastructure, hired certified lifeguards, and installed drain covers after the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act. Swimming pool drownings, in absolute terms, fell from about 4,000 annually in 2005 to under 3,700 by 2021, while sushi restaurants increased by roughly three per capita in major metros. It's not the wasabi saving lives; it's simply that richer, more urban, better-educated America learned to do both things better at the same time.

The real lesson here is that our brains are exquisite machines for finding the second story hidden inside the first, and that story is almost always about money, infrastructure, and where people choose to live. We look at sushi and drowning rates and sense conspiracy when we should sense history. The universe, it turns out, is far too busy being indifferent to bother with irony.