Abstract

Fish has been widely used as an excellent source of animal protein and other nutrients. It functions to prevent human beings from variety of diseases all over the world. Through different processing methods, it is possible to achieve the keeping of quality and securing fish availability round the year. This paper reviews up-to-date research on effect of processing methods on nutritional and physico- chemical composition of fish. Additionally, effects of different fish processing methods (such as drying, smoking, freezing, cooking and canning) on chemical, physical and nutritional composition are presented. The most compositional constituents of fish which can be affected through processing methods are proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and the sensory attributes such as color, flavor, texture and general appearance. Changes of chemical composition resulted from processing methods can mainly be expressed as denaturation, coagulation, reduction of protein digestibility, oxidation and loss of vitamins. Heating protein fish can cause loss of nutritional value through amino acids destruction, protein denaturation and maillard reaction. Smoking is one of the processing methods which has an impact on fish protein denaturation that leads to changes in physical and chemical structure of protein and a reduction in the biological availability of protein. The major physical changes which occur on fish due to processing are changing texture (becomes hard and firm), change in color (the major first judgment detrimental factor) and yields. The extent of these changes depends on the temperature and time of treatment. All these changes (chemical, physical and nutritional) affects the final quality of fish and fishery products.

Keywords

fish, chemical composition, processing methods, effect of processing, protein, inflammatory disease, nutritional composition, processing plants, amino acid composition, physical changes, rehydration