Is Sushi-Restaurant Wasabi Actually Fake?
The little green paste next to a sushi roll gets credited with an eye-watering kick real wasabi is famous for, and lately with an eye-watering statistic too: dozens of food and travel sites now state, as settled fact, that 95 to 99 percent of the "wasabi" served in North America isn't wasabi at all. We went looking for where that specific number actually comes from — and for something more checkable than any blog's word for it: what the world's biggest wasabi-tube brand prints on its own ingredient list.
The claim
Most of the green paste served as "wasabi" at sushi restaurants — commonly cited as 95 to 99 percent of it — is not made from the wasabi plant, but is a substitute of horseradish, mustard, and green food colouring.
Source trail
Every current blog post repeating the "95 to 99 percent" figure that we traced leads back to the same place: a 15 October 2014 Washington Post article, "Why the wasabi sushi restaurants serve is almost never actual wasabi." We could not read that article directly ourselves — it returned a 403 both times we tried to fetch it this session, consistent with it now sitting behind a paywall. But a separate, independently reported piece, a 2015 Canadian Geographic profile that interviews the same figure on its own, corroborates who the number traces to: Brian Oates, president and chief science officer of Pacific Coast Wasabi, described by Canadian Geographic as heading "the largest commercial wasabi producer in the world outside Japan." The most-repeated statistic behind this whole claim comes from the head of a company that sells real wasabi — someone with a direct commercial stake in people believing what they're normally served is fake. None of the current blog posts we checked name Oates or mention that; nearly all of them cite "The Washington Post" instead, as if the newspaper had run its own independent count.
What's confirmed
- Real wasabi is a genuine, distinct plant, and independently confirmed to be unusually hard to grow outside Japan. Utah State University Extension (fetched directly, checked 2026-08-24, published April 2020) states plainly: "It is thought to be one of the rarest and most difficult vegetables to grow in the world," requiring "moist to wet organic rich soils with continuous flowing water." Washington State University's own Vegetable Research and Extension program independently maintains a dedicated wasabi cultivation guide for the same reason. Neither source has any commercial stake in the fake-wasabi statistic — this is a structural, horticultural reason a cheap substitute would dominate the market, regardless of what the exact percentage turns out to be.
- The world's dominant "wasabi" tube brand states, on its own official site, that horseradish outweighs actual wasabi in its product by roughly seven to one. S&B Foods' own worldwide product page (fetched directly, checked 2026-08-24) lists, for its Europe and France tube products: "Horseradish 31.7%, Humectant (Sorbitol), Rice bran oil, Salt, Dextrin, Wasabi 4.5%, Potato starch, Water, Flavouring, Turmeric, Thickener (Xanthan gum), Acid (Citric acid), Colour (Brilliant blue FCF)." Its Australia version states the same ratio in different words: "Horseradish (31%) ... Wasabi Japonica (4.5%)." These are the company's own published percentages for its own product, not a third party's estimate — and they corroborate the core claim independently of Brian Oates or the Washington Post figure entirely.
- S&B's North American version of the same tube product lists horseradish first and wasabi eighth of thirteen ingredients, with no percentages given for that region. The full listed order (fetched directly from S&B's own site, checked 2026-08-24) is: "Horseradish, Sorbitol, Food starch modified, Rice bran oil, Sugar, Salt, Water, Wasabi, Artificial flavor, Citric acid, Turmeric, Xanthan gum, Artificial color (FD&C Blue#1)." U.S. food-labeling rule requires ingredients to be listed in descending order of predominance by weight, with an exception allowing ingredients present at 2 percent or less to be grouped together at the list's end in any order (21 CFR 101.4, fetched directly, checked 2026-08-24). Either way, horseradish's position as the very first ingredient means it is present in a larger quantity than wasabi, which sits near the end — the same imbalance the international versions state in exact numbers.
- Brian Oates is a real, named, identifiable person, independently corroborated by a publication other than the Washington Post. Canadian Geographic's own 2015 profile (fetched directly, checked 2026-08-24) confirms his role and quotes him giving a separate, specific figure for Japan itself: "only five per cent of sushi restaurants in Japan serve real wasabi" — a claim that, notably, implies imitation wasabi is the norm even in the plant's home country, not just abroad.
What isn't
- The specific 95%/99% figures for North America. Every current source repeating them that we checked traces to Oates's estimate, reported secondhand through the paywalled 2014 Washington Post piece — not to any independent survey, industry audit, or study that actually counted restaurants or products. We found no organization other than Oates's own company, and no academic or government study, that has published its own measurement of what share of North American sushi restaurants serve real versus imitation wasabi.
- The exact wasabi content of the North American tube formula specifically. S&B publishes percentages for its Europe, France, and Australia products but not, as far as we could find on its own site, for the North American one. We can confirm horseradish outweighs wasabi there too, from ingredient order, but not whether that region's ratio is close to, worse than, or better than the roughly 7:1 the company states for other regions.
- Whether every "wasabi" product North American sushi restaurants use is this same S&B formula. S&B is described by multiple sources as the dominant global brand, but we did not survey other brands' ingredient lists ourselves, and a minority of restaurants — by every account we found, including Oates's own — do serve fresh-grated real wasabi root rather than a tube or powder product at all.
Verdict
The core claim holds up on evidence that doesn't depend on the number everyone quotes: the world's dominant wasabi-tube brand states on its own site that its product is mostly horseradish, and the plant it's named for is independently confirmed by two university extension services to be genuinely rare and difficult to grow outside Japan — a cheap substitute dominating the market is entirely plausible on those facts alone. What doesn't hold up to a source check is the specific number everyone attaches to the claim. "95 to 99 percent" isn't a study result or an industry audit; it's one wasabi-growing executive's estimate, reported once by a newspaper now behind a paywall, and repeated ever since by sites that cite the newspaper rather than the man whose company sells the alternative.