What Crabs Are Made From Crab Sticks?

What crabs are made from crab sticks?

Crab salad is considered one of the simplest and most satisfying dishes; it is prepared for any occasion or simply taken with you to work as lunch. The same can be said about crab sandwiches (with the same sticks), which have become an invariable attribute of office snacks. Of course, any sane person understands that “it doesn't even smell like crabs here,” but this product, as the label says, is made from “surimi fish”. What kind of fish is it and how it is prepared, why products from it are comparable in price to buns in a kiosk, few people think.

The term "surimi" can mean three different concepts: finely ground cod, hake, red bass or other ocean fish, fish waste (small, sick fish, damaged by fishing or freezing) or imitation of soybean-based fish protein with the addition of starch and gluten free. As a rule, all three components are used in production, and the quality of the final product depends on their percentage.

Originally, "surimi" was a Japanese dish consisting of white fish meat, frozen and ground into a homogeneous mass. From such a blank, oriental culinary specialists sculpted various figures, decorating them with herbs and vegetables. Gradually, the art of surimi was lost, and in the middle of the 20th century it unexpectedly appeared in a completely new quality - in the industrial production of crab sticks and meat. They were first manufactured by Kanikama in 1973, and this product is still called that today in China and Japan. In eastern countries, the range of such products is quite large in terms of both prices and composition, however, Russia buys, as a rule, the cheapest of them, based on soy sublimate.

What harm can this "pseudoproduct" do to the body? First of all, the danger is represented by precisely those substances that should give crab sticks their resemblance to crabs: flavorings, flavor enhancers, thickeners and colorants. Their variety is quite large: here are stabilizers E450, E420, and dyes E120 and E160, which cause allergic reactions and impair the functioning of the digestive system, E171, E621 and others. The basis of crab sticks is soy protein, that is, it is simply a surrogate for soy - a plant due to which a serious scandal has been developing in the food industry recently: many scientists argue that genetically modified soy (modified in such a way as to lose sensitivity to pesticides) can be dangerous for a person, but neither agree with this opinion, nor refute it,since the time required for testing has not yet passed.

There are rules according to which manufacturers are required to indicate on the packaging of soy products whether or not modified plants were used in the manufacture. In the situation with crab sticks, this is out of the question, because they just write "surimi", and what is meant by this - let the buyer guess.

There are many diets based on seafood, as it is one of the most nutritious and safe for health types of food, but you should not replace the real "seafood" with protein freeze-dried fish and crab, the variety of which is increasing every day. In order to distinguish such foods and exclude them from your diet, just look at the composition indicated on the package: all crab sticks contain a large amount of sugar (it gives an additional taste), and in combination with flavor enhancers, it not only increases the number of calories, but also helps to whet the appetite.

The "crab" market is growing and expanding significantly: frozen crab meat, crab claws, crabs with shrimps and other products appear. Unfortunately, most of them do not even contain fish, and the variety is achieved only due to the greater number of colors and flavors and their combinations.

Statistics show that the demand for frozen crab sticks is growing every year, mainly due to low-income areas, in addition, this product is readily purchased as a cheap snack for alcohol. Manufacturers compete with each other, convincing the buyer to buy their products, some of them, especially start-up companies, even declare that their crab sticks contain up to 40% of real fish substrate. However, soon such “sticks” are rapidly deteriorating: why buy expensive raw materials if the buyer will spend money on ordinary ones, with vegetable protein?

Author: Maria Lev (specially for Calorizator.ru)

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