Seafood Mix--Fake Crabmeat?

[Pufferpunk]

I'm sure many of you are familiar with & have purchased the frozen seafood mix. Is the crab meat in there real crap or something else? It looks too perfect to be real crab. Is it OK to feed to puffers & other fish?

[landon]

if it was cheap then i would presume it to be fake as crab meat is extremely expensive in any form around here at least

[Flutter]

Don't they need to provide the ingredients on the bag by law? Around here fake crab is actually pollock which is a really cheap kind of fish.

[Dadof4]

More than likely fake crab. It is a fish product but it is also processed and cooked. I pick it out along with some of the other stuff for variety, cook it and, add a little http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sandwich-Shop ... e/14651655 or http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sandwich-Shop ... e/14651654 depending on the mood. Add a little pasta of your choice and instant lunch! No waste from the mixed seafood bag either!

Great, now I'm hungry.....

[Pufferpunk]

Filbert liked it.

[sevenyearnight]

The order of posts sounded like you made that pasta for Filbert lol.

[purplecandle]

I like to mix it with cream cheese and put on bagels, or roll it in wontons and fry it to make fried crab rangoon.

[Pufferpunk]

You trying to make Filbert fat?

[Dadof4]

Nope! Just his person!

[Pufferpunk]

Not gonna happen...

[Dadof4]

Actually it's not that fattening and I think the WW points are low for it. It one of the things that I eat when I go through the P90X program. It's good with out the pasta and with some fine chopped onion, low fat mayo, a little cajun seasoning, and eat it on a slice of a large tomato. My wife likes to add a little fine chopped pickle, light mayo, and celery and does it on a potato bread.

[luna1580]

hey there

if it looks "too perfect" in that it is so uniform in shape/color/visible layers-fibers of meat, then it's certainly fake crab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_stick) aka surimi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surimi.

-so it is a processed food and contains binders like wheat, soy products, carrageenins, and/or egg proteins. BUT it's probably no worse for a fish -even a puffer- than any other form of processed food designed for fish instead of people is. i wouldn't make it a sole diet staple for us or them , but i doubt the actual presence of the land-plant and seaweed-derived additives, or even the egg stuff, is in the end way different than feeding ghost shrimp loaded full of processed hikari algae wafers, just as an example..... if it's just a wee bit of his diet i think he'll be fine.

oh, i also love the fake crab as a quick lunch sandwich filler, and it is awesome flaked in cold pasta salads with green peas, green onions, celery (and/or fennel) etc. and a mayo-type or ranch-based dressing (add some hot sauce and garlic or dill too!). buy it as "crab delights" or some-such in your refrigerated seafood section.

[luna1580]

Don't they need to provide the ingredients on the bag by law? Around here fake crab is actually pollock which is a really cheap kind of fish.

pollock is currently a "really cheap kind of fish", but only because we've not yet been confronted directly with the wide impacts of catching and eating it at the local grocery seafood counter...

this is a "PSA" type response, not a preachy one (at least that's my intention, please forgive if it comes off the latter). seafood is my number one thing i love to eat, so it pains me to think about any of this when i buy seafoods for me or my pets, but check it out: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campai ... /red-fish/

a similar list can be found in many places with a quick google, here's more info: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx. this is general scientific consensus about world fishstocks, not any "enviro over-reaction" if anyone reading this (in general) is concerned about such "political" stuff.

as far as pollock (which i've eaten with abandon as fish tacos in alaska, at the end of an outward bound course no less..., and still do eat):

"Bycatch in the pollock fishery is huge given the scale of the fishery. Crab, salmon, and groundfish species are routinely caught as bycatch. In 2007, 130,000 chinook salmon were caught as bycatch in the pollock fishery, setting a bycatch record that alarmed fishing dependent communities, environmentalists, and fishery managers.

Pollock overfishing has an adverse effect on Alaska native communities throughout the southern half of the Bering Sea and the Aleutians, as well as the Gulf of Alaska. Localized depletion is forcing local fishermen to travel farther and farther offshore in search of fish that were once plentiful right off the beach, and in the process to face increasing risks for diminishing returns. The fishery also has a negative impact on native communities in Canada. In 2007, DNA sampling of chinook salmon bycatch in the pollock fishery revealed that more than 26,000 fish were of Yukon river origin. As a result of the huge bycatch in 2007, some First Nation subsistence communities upriver in the Canadian Yukon were not allowed to catch their full chinook sustenance quota that year."

and i know those stats have not improved in more recent years: http://www.thesalmonpeople.com/index.html

-as people who love to keep wet-pets in our homes, especially as most pet puffers are still wild caught, we need to learn all of this stuff, disheartening as it may be.....

if you look at the "fish watch lists" remember all of the places in US culture where we are offered fried shrimp, hoki/pollack/cod other "whitefish" fast-food patties, etc. for really, really cheap. as general consumers we are never ever given cause to think we're buying a threatened species "filet-o-fish" or "more than 10-times-it's-weight dead bycatch" "shrimp feast"..... people literally do not know, and you can't care if you don't even know.

i was most shocked that the atlantic scallop fishery kills significant numbers of loggerhead sea turtles. literally i never thought of that connection before.....

so anyway, we all need more prominent, everyday education about the global status of our world ocean and the fish we (and our pets) eat. this is something we should ask our governments -wherever we live- to make real on a local educational level.
if you don't know the facts you cannot "choose wisely".

-laura

[Flutter]

It's funny/sad because last semester I did a DNA analysis of a ton of different fish (well maybe about 20 ) and about 50% were illegally mislabeled by North American government standards. Personally I don't even eat food with a bit of seafood in it. Yuck!

[Pufferpunk]

Thanks for your thorough response, luna! Filbert reqay loves the stuff but he also loves everything else in that bag of goodies.