Why does seafood go bad faster than meat?
In: Biology
There are several reasons why seafood spoils faster than meat from animals that live on the dry part of the earth.
* Fish has a higher content of water than meat, so it’s easier for bacteria to find a home here, as most bacteria prefer a wetter environment to thrive in.
* Fish doesn’t have a lot of collagen, so bacteria find it easier to penetrate the flesh.
* Fish contains a lot of poly-unsaturated fats (like the well-known omega-3 fatty acids) which makes it healthy, but these fats also spoil faster (they have several double bonds which makes them oxidise easier).
* Lots of fish live in cold water, so the enzymes that break down fish meat are used to the cold. Storing fish at regular fridge temperatures doesn’t slow down rotting as well as storing meat in the fridge does. Storing fish on ice is better, but still not as effective as storing meat in the fridge (2-7 degrees Celcius).
* All animals store energy as glycogen in their muscles. In general, land animals don’t fight a lot before being killed, but fish do. So, fish deplete their glycogen supplies and turn it into readily available energy in the form of glucose in the bloodstream. Turns out bacteria love to feast on glucose.
* EDIT: u/th3cr1t1c pointed out one more important reason! One other thing to watch out for is that fish in the Scombridae family (includes mackerel, tuna, bonito/skipjack) release histamine into the flesh even after death. Thorough cooking does not mitigate this since it’s not a bacteria you’re trying to kill off… It’s when raw scombroid fish are handled at temperatures above 40ºF at any point in the process from stream to table that it can be dangerous to consume.
Source: studying to become a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. Most of this information is from The Science of Nutrition by Thompson, Manore & Vaughan.
EDIT: Changed RDN to Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, as indeed it’s not a generally known abbreviation. Also, figured out how to turn * into bullet points 🙂
EDIT2: Wow, this blew up 🙂 Thanks for all the replies and the awards, very much appreciated! I tried to answer to everyone to the best of my knowledge. Please let me know if I didn’t reply to you yet, my inbox suddenly was, well, fuller than it had ever been. Thanks to u/GLEN25801 for asking a question that I happened to know an answer to!
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