Abstract
Canned fish products are of increasing popularity in Australia; however current Australian nutrient databases do not include data on the percentage fish in these products. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a database of the percentage fish and seafood contained in common canned fish and seafood products, for use in clinical trials. Six major supermarkets in the Illawarra region, NSW were audited for canned seafood products, and a database of reported percentage fish and seafood was developed. Mean + SD of each type of product was then determined. To validate the database, a representative sample of canned tuna products were weighed according to Codex Alimentarius methods. The weighed percentage fish was compared to reported percentage via independent sample t-test and Mann-Whitney test. Percentage fish data was collected for n = 214 canned fish products. The mean percentage fish in tuna products was 60.4% + 11.3% (n = 144), 72.0% + 14.7% in salmon products (n = 31) and 70.9% + 9.3% in sardine products (n = 23). There was no significant difference between the reported and weighed percentage fish. This database highlighted the substantial proportion of additional ingredients found in canned fish products. Given the popularity of such products, future studies measuring fish consumption should use a similar database to accurately measure fish intake.
Highlights
Habitual fish consumption has been associated with a range of health benefits, including decreased incidence of stroke and heart failure and decreased mortality from cardiovascular disease [1,2,3,4,5]
Given the popularity of canned fish and seafood products in Australia [7], these findings suggest that many Australian consumers may be overestimating their current fish consumption, and highlight the importance of percentage labelling of food products
It is clear that not adjusting for percentage fish in canned products in clinical trials could result in a large overestimation of the amount of fish consumption, which could potential lead to inaccurate conclusions being drawn about fish intake patterns
Summary
Habitual fish consumption has been associated with a range of health benefits, including decreased incidence of stroke and heart failure and decreased mortality from cardiovascular disease [1,2,3,4,5]. Australian and international nutrient databases such as the AUSNUT 2007 [8] and the USDA National Nutrient Database [9] contain nutrient data on a variety of canned fish and seafood products, based on the edible portion of each product. Whilst this allows for the calculation of nutrient intake, no data is available on the percentage fish or seafood in these canned products in these databases, which is essential for accurately measuring consumption of fish and seafood
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