Alas, this product has nothing to do with crabs. Cheap fish and more - that's what crab sticks are actually made of.
Sticks are made from surimi. This is a mixture of minced meat of inexpensive types of fish: blue whiting, pollock, hake, perch. Fillets are washed, grinded, passed through a centrifuge. The result is a dense mass without a specific fishy smell. It is boiled and cut into shape.
What else is added to crab sticks
Examination shows that they contain both vegetable oil, and stabilizers (carrageenan, phosphates), and preservatives (sorbic acid), flavorings. Most of the sticks are so white thanks to the food additive titanium dioxide. And paprika extract or carmine (dyes) give the surface of the sticks a "crab" red color. Glutamic acid enhances the taste.
Are all of these supplements legal?
Legal if their quantity complies with the technical regulations for food products. By the way, the general technical conditions for crab sticks were developed back in 1985 in the USSR; they are still guided by manufacturers from the countries of the former union, whose products are on our market. But the basic regulatory document - Gost - is not. And this means that each manufacturer - both ours and foreign ones - can add their own additives to the recipe.
