Innovative Preservation Methods Improving the Quality and Safety of Fish Products: Beneficial Effects and Limits

Abstract

Fish products are highly perishable, requiring proper processing to maintain their quality and safety during the entire storage. Different from traditional methods used to extend the shelf-life of these products (smoking, salting, marinating, icing, chilling, freezing, drying, boiling, steaming, etc.), in recent years, some alternative methods have been proposed as innovative processing technologies able to guarantee the extension of their shelf-life while minimally affecting their organoleptic properties. The present review aims to describe the primary mechanisms of some of these innovative methods applied to preserve quality and safety of fish products; namely, non-thermal atmospheric plasma (NTAP), pulsed electric fields (PEF), pulsed light (PL), ultrasounds (US) and electrolyzed water (EW) are analysed, focusing on the main results of the studies published over the last 10 years. The limits and the benefits of each method are addressed in order to provide a global overview about these promising emerging technologies and to facilitate their greater use at industrial level. In general, all the innovative methods analysed in this review have shown a good effectiveness to control microbial growth in fish products maintaining their organoleptic, nutritional and sensory characteristics. Most of the technologies have also shown the great advantage to have a lower energy consumption and shorter production times. In contrast, not all the methods are in the same development stage; thus, we suggest further investigations to develop one (or more) hurdle-like non-thermal method able to meet both food production requirements and the modern consumers’ demand.

Calcined Oyster Shell Powder as a Natural Preservative for Maintaining Quality of White Shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei)

“…COSP-treated shrimp tended to be harder than the control, which indicates that COSP treatment was efficient in improving the physical properties of shrimp. Similar results were found for chitosan-coated oil sardine, chitosan–gelatin-coated shrimp, and green tea extract-treated shrimp [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. Hardness was correlated linearly with the TVC of microbial species for control shrimp ( R 2 = −0.97) and COSP-treated shrimp ( R 2 = −0.94, −0.92, −0.96, and −0.97 for 0.5%, 1.0%, 2.0%, and 4.0% COSP treatment, respectively) and control shrimp.…”

Effects of single-, dual-, and multi-frequency ultrasound-assisted freezing on the muscle quality and myofibrillar protein structure in large yellow croaker (Larimichthys crocea)

“…Large and unevenly distributed ice crystals could cause irreversible mechanical damages to the muscle tissue, which destroyed the myofibrillar protein (MP) stability and further affected the function and structure of MP ( Wang et al, 2019 ). Emerging food processing techniques have been reported to effectively maintain the quality of frozen foods by reducing the freezing time, such as pulsed electric fields, high pressure, static magnetic fields, radiofrequency waves, and power ultrasound ( Speranza et al, 2021 , Tian et al, 2021 ).…”

Research Progress on Nutritional Value, Preservation and Processing of Fish—A Review

“…Microbial activity contributed to one-fourth of the worldwide food supply losses and 30% of fish product losses. Recently, fish preservation techniques have gained increasing interest because the prevention of microbial spoilage of fish without adversely affecting its nutritional quality, prolonged shelf life, flavour and textural quality has also been improved [ 45 ].…”