Edible fish or shellfish from the sea.
Dictionary:
sea·food (sē'fūd') ![]() |
| 5min Related Video: seafood |
| Food and Nutrition: seafood |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: seafood |
For more information on seafood, visit Britannica.com.
| Wikipedia: Seafood |
Seafood is any sea animal or plant that is served as food and eaten by humans. Seafoods include seawater animals, such as fish and shellfish (including molluscs and crustaceans).[1] By extension, in North America although not generally in the United Kingdom, the term seafood is also applied to similar animals from fresh water and all edible aquatic animals are collectively referred to as seafood.
Edible seaweeds are also seafood, and are widely eaten around the world, especially in Asia. See the category of sea vegetables.
The harvesting of wild seafood is known as fishing and the cultivation and farming of seafood is known as aquaculture, mariculture, or in the case of fish, fish farming. Seafood is distinguished from meat, although it is still animal and is excluded in a vegetarian diet. Seafood is an important source of protein in many diets around the world, especially in coastal areas.
Contents |
There are over 31,000 species of fish, making them the most diverse group of vertebrates. However, only a small number of the total species are considered food fish and are commonly eaten.
The principal food fish specie groups are:
Fish is a highly perishable product. The fishy smell of dead fish is due to the breakdown of amino acids into biogenic amines and ammonia.[2]
Live food fish are sometimes transported in tanks at high expense for an international market that prefers its seafood killed immediately before it is cooked. Delivery of live fish without water is also being explored. [3] While some seafood restaurants keep live fish in aquaria for display purposes or for cultural beliefs, the majority of live fish are kept for dining customers. The live food fish trade in Hong Kong, for example, is estimated to have driven imports of live food fish to more than 15,000 tonnes in 2000. Worldwide sales that year were estimated at US$400 million, according to the World Resources Institute. [4]
If the cool chain has not been adhered to correclty, food products generally decay and become harmful before the validity date printed on the package. As the potential harm for a consumer when eating rotten fish is much larger than for example with dairy products, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has introduced regulation in the USA requiring the use of Time Temperature Indicators such as OnVu on certain fresh chilled seafood products [5].
Fresh fish is a highly perishable food product, so it must be eaten promptly or discarded; it can be kept for only a short time. In many countries, fresh fish are filleted and displayed for sale on a bed of crushed ice or refrigerated. Fresh fish is most commonly found near bodies of water, but the advent of refrigerated train and truck transportation has made fresh fish more widely available inland.
Long term preservation of fish is accomplished in a variety of ways. The oldest and still most widely used techniques are drying and salting. Desiccation (complete drying) is commonly used to preserve fish such as cod. Partial drying and salting is popular for the preservation of fish like herring and mackerel. Fish such as salmon, tuna, and herring are cooked and canned. Most fish are filleted prior to canning, but some small fish (e.g. sardines) are only decapitated and gutted prior to canning.
Seafood is consumed all over the world; it provides the world's prime source of high-quality protein: 14–16% of the animal protein consumed world-wide; over one billion people rely on seafood as their primary source of animal protein.[6][7] Fish is among the most common food allergens.[8]
Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and Portugal are the greatest consumers of seafood per capita in the world.[9]
Fish and shellfish have a natural tendency to concentrate mercury in their bodies, often in the form of methylmercury, a highly toxic organic compound of mercury. Species of fish that are high on the food chain, such as shark, swordfish, king mackerel, albacore tuna, and tilefish contain higher concentrations of mercury than others. This is because mercury is stored in the muscle tissues of fish, and when a predatory fish eats another fish, it assumes the entire body burden of mercury in the consumed fish. Since fish are less efficient at depurating than accumulating methylmercury, fish-tissue concentrations increase over time. Thus species that are high on the food chain amass body burdens of mercury that can be ten times higher than the species they consume. This process is called biomagnification. The first occurrence of widespread mercury poisoning in humans occurred this way in Minamata, Japan, now called Minamata disease.
Research into population trends of various species of seafood is pointing to a global collapse of seafood species by 2048. Such a collapse would occur due to pollution and overfishing, threatening oceanic ecosystems, according to some researchers.[10]
A major international scientific study released in November 2006 in the journal Science found that about one-third of all fishing stocks worldwide have collapsed (with a collapse being defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum observed abundance), and that if current trends continue all fish stocks worldwide will collapse within fifty years.[11]
The FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004 report estimates that in 2003, of the main fish stocks or groups of resources for which assessment information is available, "approximately one-quarter were overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion (16%, 7% and 1% respectively) and needed rebuilding."[12]
The National Fisheries Institute, a trade advocacy group representing the United States seafood industry, disagree. They claim that currently observed declines in fish population are due to natural fluctuations and that enhanced technologies will eventually alleviate whatever impact humanity is having on oceanic life.[13]
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Seafood |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
| Translations: Seafood |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - fisk, skaldyr, fiskemad, "alt godt fra havet"
Nederlands (Dutch)
eetbare zeevis, schelp-/ schaaldieren
Français (French)
n. - fruits de mer
Deutsch (German)
n. - Meeresfrüchte
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ψάρια και θαλασσινά
Italiano (Italian)
frutti di mare
Português (Portuguese)
n. - frutos do mar (m)
Русский (Russian)
морепродукты, дары моря
Español (Spanish)
n. - mariscos, pescado
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - skaldjur
中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
海产食品, 海味
中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 海產食品, 海味
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 해산 식품, (호모 상대로서의) 선원, 해산물
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) كل سمكه أو محارة بحريه تؤكل
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - מאכלי-ים (דגים וכ')
If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.
To select your translation preferences click here.
| shore dinner | |
| surf and turf | |
| en coquille |
| What seafood starts with y? | |
| Why does bisque usually contain seafood? | |
| Where is the seafood in Colombia? |
Copyrights:
![]() | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Food and Nutrition. A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition. Copyright © 1995, 2003, 2005 by A. E. Bender and D. A. Bender. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Food Lover's Companion. Food Lover's Companion. Copyright © 2001 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Seafood". Read more | |
![]() | Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more |
Mentioned in