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Got a point there, but it’s what the sources say. One possibility might be that it’s the teenagers that got scammed (or even just filing the complaint?), but their parents’ accounts that got emptied. This part of the report is unfortunately really lacking in detailed descriptions of the data.
Here’s the study, for anyone who wants to read it. It’s surprisingly short and open access.
A few things:
The participants took Wasabi supplements once a day for 12 weeks, not just normal Wasabi. In each pill, there was 0.8 mg of the active compound (6-MSITC). Quick googling gave me the following for the level of that compound in actual Wasabi:
In other words, you could actually also get the same amount of 6-MSITC that was in the supplements by eating a few grams of regular wasabi each day, assuming that the processed stuff still has similar levels. The abstract provides a reasonable summary of the study, and of the fact that it agrees largely with some previous science on the subject (although there’s not a lot, two studies in small journals):
They tested the study participants once before and once after the 12 weeks of daily wasabi supplements. The participants were not tested for any long term cognitive effects.
As someone else has pointed out here in the comments, the study does list a Wasabi company as one of the sources of funding:
Also, I don’t want to poison the well too much, but I feel like I should mention that the editorial board of the journal resigned in 2018 because the publishers “pressured them to accept manuscripts of mediocre quality and importance”. Doesn’t mean it’s all bad, but it’s a very early study and more research should be done.