I found myself asking this very question just last week. I was going through the mail and came across the weekly grocery ads and noticed Kroger had it on sale. I realize the name does a pretty good job at telling me its not real crab meat but it doesn’t really say what it is exactly. I mean is it tofu? Is it some other type of fish? A shellfish mixture? Crab & fish? It could be a lot of different things.
I just couldn’t take “imitation crab meat” and be fine with it. I have spent a good deal of time recently trying to be healthy and caring about what I put in my body so I asked Mike to look it up for me because I was quite curious and at the same time a bit scared. I mean unless you want to shell out for the expensive sushi at a restaurant or real crab meat at grocery store for seafood dip or gumbo you are going to get this imitation stuff.
So what we found is that imitation crab meat is in fact a lesser known fish surimi, or finely pulverized white fish flesh (hake or pollock) with some coloring added to look like crab meat. Imitation crab meat was developed in Japan 800 years ago and was not brought over to the US until the 1970s. So its obviously been around for quite some time. I went ahead and visited the American Pregnancy website because they have a comprehensive listing of fish/seafood and their mercury levels and noted both of those fish types are considered low mercury list and safe to eat. So I don’t think I need to worry too much about eating imitation crab meat anymore. Hopefully this helped someone else out too.
6 responses so far ↓
1 busymom // Apr 1, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I’ve always wondered this too. Never thought to actually look it up though. Thanks for the info.
2 Arwen Taylor // May 2, 2008 at 4:22 pm
This helped me out as well. Thanks for doing the research. I’ve recently changed my diet and am eating a lot more salads that include a few pieces of imitation crab meat. It’s good to know that I’m not making myself sicker by eating it.
3 Nouveau LaChef // May 7, 2008 at 6:26 am
I’m making homemade crab rangoons tomorrow, and it was REALLY good to know that if I break down and buy the fake stuff, I’m not going to be frying little pockets of whatever-was-floating-in-the-Pacific. Yeah, I still want to use “real” crab, but as a young guy on a budget, sometimes a little krab saves a little kash, you know?
4 Tricia // May 11, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Terrific information! I would bet that you will start getting a lot of hits on this post because imitation crab is very popular.
5 nicolemm // May 14, 2008 at 8:59 pm
I always thought it was monk fish, guess I was wrong. Although it doesn’t taste like crab, I think it is good! But then again, I will eat anything!
6 Susan // Aug 27, 2008 at 3:50 am
I read in an article from the internet that some suppliers may use dory fish aka pangas fish to make imitation crabmeat as they are so much cheaper. However, from the said article, it was stated that dory fish are teeming with high levels of poisons and bacteria. How true is this? I am curious as myself and my family likes to eat imitation crabmeat and I want to know if they are really safe to consume.
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