Seafood & Aquatic

Manufacturers and suppliers face various challenges in delivering high-quality, flavorful and safe seafood. These challenges include spoilage, oxidation and off-flavors that can ruin quality and sales. Luckily, food additives provide solutions for these issues which let manufacturers optimize flavor, ensure safety and extend shelf life of their seafood products.

Preservatives are a crucial category of food additives in seafood and aquatic industries. These substances prevent spoilage from microbes, oxidation or enzymes. Examples are sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate and citric acid. These additives widely get used in canned and packaged seafood to ensure safety and prolong shelf life.

Another very important seafood additive is stabilizers. These help maintain consistent texture of products. Stabilizers like carrageenan, xanthan gum and guar gum often go in things like imitation crab and fish sauces. These additives prevent separation, keep viscosity and improve mouthfeel.

Seafood flavor optimization also relies heavily on food additives. Seafood and aquatic goods can benefit from adding things like monosodium glutamate (MSG), nucleotides and hydrolyzed vegetable proteins. These enhancers improve the natural seafood flavors to make them more appealing to people buying them. Artificial flavors and extracts can also be used to create unique, distinctive flavor profiles to match different consumer preferences.

Antioxidants are another must-have food additive which is used when processing seafood. They prevent oxidation which leads to rancid, off-taste and change of color. Popular antioxidants for seafood include ascorbic acid (vitamin C), erythorbic acid and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT).

A further popular additive used in the seafood industry are texturizers and firming agents. These additives include sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) which is commonly used to improve the texture of seafood, making it appear firmer and fresher. This additive helps in retaining moisture and preventing the seafood from becoming dry and tough during processing and storage.