Quality preservation in chilled and frozen fish products by employment of slurry ice and natural antioxidants

P>Fish products are known to provide high levels of constituents important for the human diet. At the same time, wild and farmed fish species are highly perishable products, the quality and freshness of which rapidly declines post-mortem. Accordingly, efficient storage and processing technologies need to be employed to reduce postmortem quality losses until the product reaches the consumer. The present review covers recent efforts carried out on some new and advanced strategies related to chilled and frozen storage. In the first part, research concerning the use of binary systems (slurry ice) is reviewed, this focussed on the commercialisation of fresh fish products as such or to its employment as raw material for processing. Then, the application of exogenous antioxidants to ensure retention of high quality is addressed; in this part, special attention is accorded to the endogenous antioxidant content retention and to the antioxidant/pro-oxidant balance in fish foods.