Major achievements in LIPIDTEXT

Preventing seafood lipid oxidation and texture softening to maintain healthy components and quality of seafood

Studies of model emulsion consisting of three different emulsifiers, at two different pH levels show that the emulsifier had a significant influence on the oxidative stability. There was a relationship between the droplet charge and the oxidative stability of the emulsion. However, the results indicated that other factors than the droplet charge affected the oxidative stability. An interesting finding in fish mince models from cod, herring or salmon showed that there were large differences between the oxidative stabilities of the investigated minces.

A liposome model based on cod phospholipids has been set up and methods to continuously measure oxygen reduction in combination with continuous measurements of formation of primary and secondary oxidation products have been implemented. A significant achievement was the establishment of the first mathematical model on oxidation rate in liposomes. The model predicts the oxidation rate as a function of the concentration of lipids and iron. These results will form the basis for our future work on mathematical modelling of oxidation in liposomes and emulsions.

A number of different natural antioxidants have been tested in minced horse mackerel. An important achievement for the industry was the finding that the natural antioxidants caffeic acid and catechin are able to efficiently inhibit oxidation. This result will be of great interest to the industry due to an increasing consumer demand for replacing synthetic compounds with natural ingredients. Interestingly, the antioxidants did not seem to affect parameters related to texture.

It was shown that the cathepsin activity was much higher in fish muscle than in bovine muscle. The cathepsin was mostly found in the non-lysosomal fraction and the cathepsin activity correlated well with gaping.

People in this project