Young's 16 Seafood Sticks

Many years ago while following some super low calorie diet, I used to snack on seafood sticks. I'd all but forgotten about them until I spotted these packs of Young’s ‘16 Seafood Sticks’ recently and decided to try them out again.

Young’s Seafood sticks, described as Crab flavour Surimi Sticks with water and starches, are low in calories, having just 12 calories per stick.

They’re packed into a sealed wrapper and have to be refrigerated. Each seafood stick has its own clear wrapper, but once you’ve opened the outer sealed wrapper, all of them have to be eaten within two days.

These rectangular shaped snacks have an odd rubbery like texture with a taste which slightly resembles prawns.

Checking out the ingredients, the label mentions Surimi (35%) (processed white fish protein, sugar). Not knowing what this was, I decided to investigate.

Seafood stick unwrapped

According to Wikipedia, Surimi is a kind of fish puree. It’s made by mixing ground white fish such as Pollock or hake to create a thick paste, similar to the way reformed meat is made. For example, some types of processed ham or chicken slices. Seafood sticks also have added starches, some flavour enhancers and sugar.

They’re quite versatile in that you can just eat them straight out of the wrapper. Alternatively they make a tasty accompaniment to dips, chopped up and mixed with cottage cheese or added to a salad.  You can even unravel them to cover a wider area, say, a crispbread or cracker.

This is a snack I often used to make with seafood sticks. Cut cucumber into thick slices and thinly spread each slice with extra light cream cheese. Top with sliced seafood sticks and drizzle with sweet chilli sauce. Yum!

Young's Seafood sticks are found in larger supermarkets in 200g packs.

Nutrition Information per 12.5g seafood stick: 12 calories, 0.7g sugar, 0.1g fat, 0.1g saturates, 0.2g salt. High salt, Medium sugar, low fat.