ABSTRACT
The role of diet in maintenance of health has been well recognized. Educational campaigns undertaken in the last few decades have raised the awareness of the importance of both macro-and micronutrients in food and have made customers adopt a selective approach towards foods, preferring only those having low contents of saturated lipid, sugar, and sodium. In recent times, the importance of fishery products as a source of nutrients including high quality proteins, unsaturated lipids, a number of vitamins, and minerals has been realized. Several fishery items have attracted the attention of nutritionists and dieticians as a source of therapeutically important polyunsaturated fatty acids. This chapter is intended to discuss in brief the nutritional importance of fish muscle constituents and the effect of processing on them. At the onset, it is pertinent to discuss briefly the structure and composition of fish muscle before discussing the nutritional value of fishery products.
