Why Fish Additives Are so Essential
When humans were exclusively hunters and gatherers, much of what they caught or foraged would be eaten on the same day or soon after. Knowing how to preserve their food created the possibility to venture further from home without concern for how they might have to wait for their next meal. They employed salting, smoking, and the dehydrating effect of intense solar heat to ensure their food remained palatable and safe to eat. In effect, salt, woodsmoke, and sunshine became the world’s first fish additives, equally effective for preserving their freshly butchered meat.
Interestingly, each of these primitive food preservation techniques is still widely used today. Could you imagine a world without biltong?
Many people would be equally disappointed if they could not enjoy kippers for breakfast. Nevertheless, people will always want a juicy porterhouse steak or a succulent battered cod fillet with fries. However, to ensure that such foodstuffs retain the characteristic tastes, colours, and textures that make them so desirable, it is necessary to treat fresh meat and fish with various additives.
Seafood Preservation
These physical characteristics are always paramount to consumers. However, it is also crucial to ensure that food is free of pathogenic microorganisms that might cause severe illness or death. Such considerations more than justify the inclusion of the permissible chemicals routinely added to processed and frozen foods. Naturally, it is also vital that those chemicals have no potentially harmful side effects. Their inclusion should also be in the consumer’s best interest. For example, formaldehyde and tripolyphosphate are often used as fish additives, despite widespread criticism. In some countries, the former is used to disinfect foods but is both corrosive and toxic in higher concentrations and may leave a residual taste despite washing. Many other nations ban its use for such purposes.
With tripolyphosphate, the issue is not toxicity but purpose. Adding it to seafood results only in the increased absorption of water and its action plays no role in preserving. Upon cooking, that extra water is lost. Its only effect was to provide temporary extra mass for which the consumer must pay. However, reputable fisheries and seafood processors use safe, natural fish additives with proven consumer benefits.
Preserving those physical characteristics listed earlier and ensuring freedom from potentially harmful bacteria are the only justifications for the chemical treatment of food. Furthermore, local and international standards now define which chemicals are considered acceptable for this purpose and their maximum permissible concentrations. Nevertheless, the quality of seafood begins to deteriorate soon after it is removed from its natural environment. Unless it is to be eaten aboard the trawler, some form of preservation will be essential. While salting and freezing can temporarily delay that deterioration, fish additives will be necessary at some stage.
Marine creatures cannot survive long once removed from the sea. Their flesh will soon undergo post-mortem decomposition unless the process is inhibited. One common sign of deterioration is the blackening effect sometimes displayed by prawns. Other highly pigmented marine species may tend to lose their colour after death. Tequisa offers a wide range of safe, natural, and effective fish additives to overcome these and all common forms of spoilage.
