Abstract
Seal meat is of high nutritive value but is not highly exploited for human food due to ethical issues, undesirable flavors, and loss of nutrients during the processing/cooking step. In this work, commercially available processed seal meat was treated with its hydrolysates as preservatives with the aim of improving nutrient bioavailability. The contents of the nutrients were analyzed after digestion using a simulated dynamic digestion model, and the effects of different processing conditions, i.e., low-temperature processing and storage (25 °C) and high-temperature cooking (100 °C), of seal meat were investigated. Hydrolysates with antioxidant activity decreased the amounts of the less desirable Fe3+ ions in the seal meat digests. After treatment with hydrolysates at room temperature, a much higher total Fe content of 781.99 mg/kg was observed compared to other treatment conditions. The release of amino acids increased with temperature and was 520.54 mg/g for the hydrolysate-treated sample versus 413.12 mg/g for the control seal meat sample treated in buffer. Overall, this study provides useful data on the potential use of seal meat as a food product with high nutritive value and seal meat hydrolysates with antioxidant activity as preservatives to control oxidation in food.
Highlights
The harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus) is a common seal species found in the Atlantic Ocean, in waters that border Canada [1]
We hypothesized that a pre-treatment step in the preparation of fresh seal meat using seal meat hydrolysates with antioxidant activity may decrease the oxidation of seal meat to ensure high nutrition value
The treatments with antioxidant hydrolysates were more effective in improving seal meat quality, presumably because the hydrolysates act as inhibitors of lipid oxidation and hydrophilic Reactive oxygen species (ROS), the major causes of the reduction in the quality of meat [14]
Summary
The harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus) is a common seal species found in the Atlantic Ocean, in waters that border Canada [1]. High-temperature processing is still a commonly used treatment method for seal meat products, including sausage and jerky. The production of seal meat hydrolysates with antioxidant activities using an enzymatic hydrolysis approach was reported [13], which showed their potential to be used as natural food preservatives for fresh seal meat. No studies have been reported on the implementation of a bioprocessing method (e.g., treatment with protein hydrolysates) combined with traditional high-temperature processing for seal meat. New bioprocessing strategies using seal meat hydrolysates to treat commercially available frozen seal meat products were investigated to determine: (i) the antioxidant effect of seal meat hydrolysates as potential preservative agents for seal meat and (ii) the effect of processing methods with low- and high-temperature treatments and hydrolysate treatment on the digestibility and nutrition intake (amino acids and minerals) of seal meat
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