Phytochemicals as natural additives for quality preservation and improvement of muscle foods: a focus on fish and fish products

Abstract

Fish and fish products offer a wide variety of nutritional and health benefits, thanks to the desirable protein and quality. Nevertheless, their quality is prone to degradation due to microbial contamination, oxidation and enzymatic reactions during the storage period. This results in the development of unsuitable flavor and rancid odor hence affecting the freshness, texture and sensory acceptability. Various processing methods such as drying, chilling, freezing etc. are employed, but they seemed to be insufficient to prevent such deterioration. Therefore, additives are added to maintain and/or improve the quality and extend the shelf-life of muscle foods, including fish products. In recent years, natural food additives are well perceived by consumers over synthetic ones. Perceived naturalness is mainly related to healthiness. Natural products, such as plant-derived phytochemicals (phenolics, essential oils, carotenoids, lignins and other molecules), having antioxidant and antimicrobial properties offer plenty of opportunities to overcome protein degradation, lipid peroxidation and also to inhibit microbial growth, thereby improving the quality and shelf-life of food products. This review intends to critically address the potential of phytochemicals as natural food additives to prevent the deterioration of the quality and safety of fish products, and thus providing healthy and safe final products to the consumers.