What is actually wrong with minced white fish?

[colditz]

I eat whitebait quite happily, they are whole fish, what could be in minced white fish that isn't in whitebait? It can't be anything harmful can it?

what are you on about colditz? (in nicest possible sense)

she means minced fish fingers I think. Which are supposed to be 'worse' than fillet fishfingers. I think colditz is asking why they are worse.

don't know the answer sorry, can only assume it's because you don't actually know what they've minced up.

fish fingers, there seems to be an anathema towards the ones that have minced fish as opposed to fillet, and I don't know why

mechanically recovered?

do you know, i much prefer the ones with minced fish,

can't stand the fillet ones. yuck

can you have mechanically recovered fish?!

pretty sure you can't mechanically recover fish.

just had a google. I think it's because they're filled with 'fillers' which bulk out the fingers, and..err..that's not good.

eyeballs, gills

mechanically recovered meat and fish have 'all' the bits in it

plus bulking agents of course

eeeeooowwwww..

I see your point about whitebait though colditz but I think that's probably different. I imagine with minced fish they just mince any old floor sweepings, well not quite by you know what I mean.

But there isn't going to be any part of the fish in there that isn't in a whole fish! IYSWIM

true (apart from bulking agents, injected water, salt, e numbers etc dependent on manufacturer)

oh yes and the bones, gills, fins, eyeballs, brains .. you know the 'whole fish and nothing but the fish'

And a whole cod has a lot more of those bits than a whitebait has!

They extract the saw dust from the air when they slice up the fish fingers (they are sliced from frozen blocks of filleted fish) and then pipe it back into the fish. Anything else airborne is obviously piped in as well. Having said that factories tend to be very clean and sterile.

The ones with the fillers in are horrid though!

But water won't actually do you any harm, and all the others could be found in the batter anyway

tastiest part, the eyeballs, so I have heard

it does make more sense now - I was kind of imagining 'minced fish' like 'minced meat' and thinking 'I've never seen that on sale at waitrose'

oh Ok I only shop at waitrose after 5 to get the 9p bread, but I thought it might be nice to say 'when I'm at waitrose . . .'

WWB, proportionatly not though. Cod probably has more white meat

the eyes are very nutricious

It also has more tail, more and larger blood vessels, larger eyes, organs, gills, bones and so on.

The food trade actually calls mechanically recovered fish "slurry" - which just about sums it up.

In most instances the fish is filleted (heads off/ tails off etc) at sea and frozen. It is then sold on in this frozen state. The odd bit of muck gets in, but not much - the filleters are seriously good at their jobs.

More likely is that the odd non-species fish makes it into the mix.

The blocks are enormous - about 10ft cubed.

God, my name should be Cod at this rate

nah soapbox still works

Typing too good