Ever wondered what’s really in your scampi? You’ll wish you hadn’t asked...
OF ALL the millions of questions typed i nto internet search engines by curious citizens, what would you say were the most common? Maybe, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ or ‘What are next week’s Lotto numbers?’ Well, how about: ‘What is in scampi?’ Curiously, this last question is posed with huge frequency in cyberspace — for, it seems, while we enjoy eating millions of these deep-fried nuggets of loveliness every year — served with a pile of chunky chips, a wedge of lemon and dollop of tartare sauce — few of us know precisely what is in them.
The correct answer to the question should be the tail of a Dublin Bay prawn (otherwise known as a langoustine). It’s the tasty, smaller crustacean cousin of the lobster, which is caught by trawlers in the Irish Sea, the North Sea and off Scotland’s west coast.
Not once in a Google search on the contents of scampi should the response ‘ pangasius catfish’ appear. But that, shockingly, is what a lot of ‘scampi’ actually is.
The Irish Daily Mail can reveal that DNA tests carried out earlier this year on a number of scampi products found that more than one in five contained flesh from this cheap, imported fish.
Bred in sprawling aquatic farms in Vietnam and Thailand, these metrelong, 40kg beasts are largely devoid of taste but are used to bulk out the langoustine tails.
The two are mixed together with water and a cocktail of other ingredients, and the resulting greyish lumps of matter are entombed in a breadcrumb coating — before being packaged and sold as ‘scampi bites’.
The amount of langoustine in these products can be as little as 7 per cent, while the fish used to bulk it out — pangasius, hake, pollock or some other white fish — will often be more than five times that.
While the companies behind these products say they give consumers the chance to experience a ‘scampi taste’ at a budget price, most who buy and eat them are totally oblivious to what they actually contain.
EVEN those who stick to the more expensive ‘wholetail scampi’ products — each made from an individual l angoustine t ai l — are unlikely to be getting much bang for their buck, s i nce each i ndividual piece of breaded scampi contains little more than 40 per cent langoustine.
The rest is made up of the outside coating and water. Indeed, tests have shown that some of them contain more water than actual langoustine.
‘Scampi can be one of the very worst examples of how the food industry cons us,’ says Joanna Blythman, an i nvestigative journalist and author of six books that have lifted the lid on the realities of our food chain.
‘Manufacturers use the name scampi, with all its connotations of upmarket deluxe langoustines, to sell a mulch of lowest-grade fish and additives bound in a greasy, thick, breaded jacket.
‘I never eat scampi, and would advise people to avoid it. It’s the worst sort of processed food, and rotten value for money.’
It was introduced in 1946 by Young’s Seafood, the UK-based frozen food manufacturer whose products are sold in Irish supermarkets and which has a factory in Kilkeel, Co. Down. The company saw it as a way to use the langoustines caught by trawlermen in search of whitefish, and by the Seventies scampi and chips had become a favourite pub meal.
Scampi nowadays, however, is far from simple. In Britain, for example, as part of a code of practice drawn up by the food industries in 1998, three pages of A4 are dedicated to how scampi sold in shops should be described.
The code stipulates a single, coated langoustine tail should be described as ‘ single wholetail scampi’. If it is made from a number of smaller pieces of scampi stuck together, it should be described as ‘formed pieces of scampi’.
‘Extended’ means it has been made from minced scampi, or with the addition of ‘prawns, whitefish or textured vegetable proteins’.
These food labelling regulations apply only to food packaged and sold to consumers and catering outlets. Pubs and restaurants can use any description they like.
In the supermarket, a packet of Young’s Jumbo Whole Scampi can be bought for €7.49 for 220g (€34.05 per kg). Described as ‘clusters of whole scampi in breadcrumbs with added water’, the ingredients list a scampi content of 41 per cent.
While this is typical of a premium product, it still means that when the water is taken into account, the actual langoustine content is well under half of the whole.
For those wanting to spend less, there are much cheaper options. A 235g pack of Youngs Scampi Bites costs €3.99 — but a close look at the ingredients reveals that this product contains just 16.5 per cent scampi, bulked out with 16 per cent of ‘whitefish’.
ASIMILAR scampi content is found in most scampi bites, with Tesco selling its own version, at €1.69 for 235g. The Tesco Everyday Value Scampi Bites contain 16 per cent scampi, alongside 15 per cent Alaskan pollock, as well as water and a list of ingredients so long it bears repeating in f ull: scampi and whitefish blend with added water (43 per cent), vegetable oil, wheat flour, water, maize flour, dextrose [a type of sugar], yeast, xylose [another type of sugar], wheat gluten, fish powder, wheat starch, sugar, raising agent [sodium carbonate], white pepper, ascorbic acid and anticaking agent silicon dioxide [this encourages ingredients to mix together well].
The ‘scampi and whitefish blend with added water’ is detailed as follows: scampi ( 16 per cent), Alaskan pollock (15 per cent), water, salt, pea fibre, pea starch, disodium diphosphate [an agent that helps food retain colour], potassium carbonate.
Slim Dinsdale, an independent consultant to the food industry, describes how a product such as this might be put together.
‘The fish mixture would typically be put into a blender and mixed to a point where you would end up with a product which would retain a bit of texture but would have a basically paste-like consistency,’ he says.
‘It would then be extruded into whatever size and shape you want: it might be a ribbon that you could chop up into pieces, or just blobs. These would then be breaded and probably flash-fried.
‘It contains some scampi and fish, and the rest of the stuff is there to assist the structure, presentation and bulking out.
‘The water is essential to keep it succulent, and a lot of the other ingredients, such as the fish powder and the disodium diphosphate, are there to hang on to the added water and stop the product disintegrating when it is cooked.’
Given the small amount of scampi in the product, is it even fair to describe it as scampi?
Fiona Wright specialises in regulation at Seafish, a body set up to support the seafood industry and the interests of consumers.
She says the term ‘scampi bites’ is not covered by the industry’s code of practice, and that there is no minimum limit set as to how little scampi they can contain.
‘ Scampi bites is a common marketing name for scampi and white fish coated in breadcrumbs,’ Fiona says. ‘This is the marketing name, not the legal name.
‘Legal names must be sufficiently descriptive to be able to distinguish the product from others with which it may be confused. This can be a lengthy and not very consumerfriendly description, so it is often found above the ingredients panel.’
Sure enough, the Tesco packaging states: ‘ Scampi fish bites formed from pieces of scampi and whitefish coated in a crispy breadcrumb.’
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SWright adds: ‘ I have been asked to look at scampi bite labelling in the past, and in my opinion it is not misleading. The packaging does reflect its lower quality, and the pictures and descriptions were accurate.’
When the Irish Daily Mail asked Tesco why their scampi bites had so many ingredients and so little scampi, a spokesman replied: ‘Our Scampi Bites are a mixture of scampi and whitefish, as is made clear on the packaging.
‘To ensure our customers have a wide range to choose from, we have a selection of other scampi products which contain only scampi. All our food is clearly labelled, so our customers can make informed choices about what they eat.’
It i s clear that many scampi bites sold are a long way from a fresh langoustine tail dipped in breadcrumbs and lightly fried — a nd nowhere is t hat better illustrated than in the distance travelled by some of the fish used to bulk them out.
Earlier t his year, Professor Mariani Stefano, a biologist at the University of Salford in the north of England, tested the DNA of samples of frozen scampi bites. Of the nine tested, two were found to contain pangasius.
‘Pangasius is cheap,’ he says. ‘It is often sold under the name river cobbler.’
There i s another reason why pangasius works well in scampi bites. Professor Stefano is a keen chef and recently bought some to try. He explains: ‘ It is actually incredibly bland, with almost no flavour at all. But it is like white rice: you put a sauce on it and make it taste of whatever you want.’
The presence of Vietnamese fish in that most Irish of foodstuffs will doubtless seem incongruous to many — but then so will many of the other ingredients too.