Nutritional, sensory and shelf life quality of tilapia and Nile perch sausages enriched with fish bone soup

Abstract

Fish is well recognized as a healthy food of its high polyunsaturated fatty acids, including omega-3 fatty acids. Development of convenient fish products is one way to increase its consumption. Development of most of these products often entails the use of fish mince which is low in minerals, especially calcium. Fish bone powder is one of the most used by products in enriching fish products because it is rich in minerals. There is however limited information on utilization of fish bone soup to develop nutritious products. Fish sausage is one of the products from fish mince which can be used as a vehicle for incorporation of calcium from fish bones because it can easily be consumed as a snack. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of fish bone soup in enriching fish based sausages. Design expert (version 11) was used to optimize fish mince and tilapia bone soup for sausage development. Commercially available fish sausage was used as a control. The nutritional value, functional properties and shelf life of the sausages were determined using standard methods. There were significant differences in the nutritional composition of the tilapia sausages (TS) and Nile perch sausages NPS (p0.05). There were significant increases in the free fatty acids, peroxide value TBA values and microbial counts of the fish based sausages within the sample during six weeks of storage (p