The Nature of Seafood Additives And Some of Their Uses
The practice of adding chemicals to foodstuffs can be traced back for thousands of years and it is one that has a variety of purposes. For example, most people use condiments such as salt, pepper, and vinegar to further enhance the natural flavour of cooked meat, fish, or vegetables. Sodium chloride, better known as salt, has also been used as a means to preserve raw meat and fish for future consumption and brine solutions are still used for this purpose on trawlers today. In recent years, a new generation of seafood additives has emerged and, with them, some innovative new uses.
For those fish lovers who like to enjoy a tasty smoked haddock fillet, the characteristic yellow colour will be important to them when shopping for this fish in their local supermarket. That colour, however, is not achieved by the smoking process alone, but also relies on the addition of an edible colourant. In such products, the emphasis is on the word “edible”, which assures us that the chemicals used have no properties that might be harmful when ingested. Today, although the majority of seafood additives are derived from natural sources, they must be subjected to rigid quality-control measures throughout their production so as to meet the health and safety standards set by international regulatory bodies such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The use of certain artificial colourants is permissible and these are still used in many food products. However, in other cases, the objective is rather to preserve the natural colour of foods, which can often become altered by cooking, freezing, and various other treatments. This is frequently the purpose of seafood additives, although it is certainly not the only one.
While the appearance of food is seen to be important to most of today’s consumers, their safety is a matter of even greater concern to food producers. As a result, some of the chemicals most commonly added to fish products are intended to ensure that they are free from pathogenic microorganisms as well as those that are simply responsible for spoiling its taste. One of the seafood additives developed for this purpose is a viscous liquid prepared from citric acid, trisodium citrate, and water. Manufactured by Tequisa and available in South Africa under the name TQ1 C2000/S, it can be used for rapid stabilisation and sanitation of fishing products. Longer treatment with this product also assists in the stabilisation and preservation of octopus and squid.
As mentioned earlier, preserving the appearance of fish products is important, as are its other qualities such as taste and texture. Other seafood additives in the Tequisa range have been developed to maintain or enhance one or more of these characteristics. Some of these are designed for the treatment of crustaceans such as crab, crayfish, and prawn, while others work well with fish species that are strongly coloured, such as red roman and orange roughy.
Still others are designed to improve whiteness or prevent the blackening known as melanosis that can affect some types of seafood. All high-quality additives from Tequisa are fully compliant with international standards and are widely available to fishing and fish-processing companies in coastal regions throughout Southern Africa.
