There are guilty pleasures in life. For some people, this may involve smoking a cigarette from time to time, or downing a carton of ice cream in one sitting. For others, it’s more like watching a bad TV series, but it allows you to not think about anything else. There’s another, much darker and more obscure category: surimi stem eaters.
Whether you taste it as a guilty pleasure or simply out of desire, surimi – let’s be honest – has a cute face. Unnaturally orange-pink in color, its half-chewy, half-melting texture is unrivaled on the face of the earth. The strange appearance and taste of crab is not for everyone, to the point that the actual demonization of surimi is in full swing. Simple foul-mouthed crime, or is surimi as chemical-laden as it seems?
Fish meat or… poison?
Initially, surimi came to us from Japan, where it bears his name “kamaboko”literally means “fish meat”. You must understand, the basic composition is fish. Lots of fish. However, after its arrival in Europe in the 1980s, food manufacturers modified the recipe slightly. Let’s just say they took liberties. And in the revisited version, there is a downside: fish meat, which is too expensive, no longer has a place.
So how many fish are actually in a stick of surimi? The voluntary standard Afnor NF V45-068 requires at least… 30% fish or cephalopod mollusk meat to be able to bear the term “surimi”. And many do not hesitate to flirt with the limits, such as for a discount stick from Auchan which contains only 28.9%, according to an article in RMC Conso in May 2024. On the side of Fleury Michon and his version “Le Moelleux”, it is necessary to calculate 38%. Honorable mention with “Supremes” from the Coraya brand which contains around 46%. Less than half a stick.
What about the remaining percentage? Rest assured, manufacturers know how to replace quality ingredients with cheaper components. Here, we are mainly talking about the addition of water and starch, but also sugar and salt, as well as… additives or cosmetics to improve taste, texture and color.
And times are tough for surimi lovers. Because as time goes on, more and more fish flesh dies in the orange stems. Between 2021 and 2023, the company Fleury Michon, for example, reduced the main ingredient in its recipes by 11%, replacing it with a much cheaper component. A typical case of “cheap inflation”, which means modifying the composition of a product to lower its production costs.
But this hasn’t stopped food manufacturers from selling more than 40,000 tonnes of surimi annually since 2019, across all brands combined. However, the trend has been declining for five years: 45,620 tonnes were sold in 2020, compared with 34,942 tonnes in 2024, according to figures from FranceAgriMer (PDF), the National Agency for Agricultural and Seafood Products.
There’s no crab in it, just flavor (added)
The first question has been asked: yes, surimi is an ultra-processed product, entirely designed by the food industry to appeal to consumers. And at a lower cost if possible. Plus, it’s an ultra-processed product that doesn’t contain… not a single crab, because crab is too expensive. Less luck, for products with crab flavor.
For high-end brands like Coraya and Fleury Michon, these fake flavors are added using natural flavorings. On the other hand, in discount products, we often find traces of monosodium glutamate, a flavor enhancer that is considered potentially dangerous to health. Lower grade surimi may also contain sorbitol and polyphosphates, which are considered potential endocrine disruptors. Guilty pleasures start to take a turn for the worse.
Additionally, these small sticks often contain too much salt, causing water retention, or even lack certain nutritional benefits, unlike real fish. So, you know almost everything about surimi. Almost.
Surimi, the hell of the ocean
Several scientific investigations have shown another problem with these seemingly harmless little sticks: they have a major impact on the environment. Correspondingly, the unclear origin. It is often impossible to know exactly where and how surimi fish meat – usually Alaskan quail, white hake, or Pacific hake – was caught. The door is open to all excesses.
An environmental black spot that has put the rod at the center of some controversy, especially when the spotlight focused on pelagic trawlers in February 2024. Annelies Ilenaoperated by the Saint-Malo Fisheries Company (Ille-et-Vilaine). This factory ship can catch up to 400 tons of fish per day to be turned into surimi paste directly on the ship. Pharaonic numbers while destroying the environment.
What can we conclude from all this information? Surimi, although criticized and open to criticism, is not prohibited for consumption. There are some foods that should be eaten in moderation for your health. But there are also things that should be prohibited, if you care about ecological factors. The perfect definition of a guilty pleasure.
