Nutritional Assessment And Safety Evaluation Of The Sea Cucumber And Abalone In Jinan City

Objectives:With the rapid socio-economic development, people’s willing to enhance the quality of life is increasing. Sea cucumber and abalone are more and more loved by people for their high nutritional value, the unique role to strengthen the immune system, disease prevention and anti-aging. However, with the social development a lot of pollutants were discharged into the sea, resulting in decreased water quality and inevitably affecting the contents of harmful heavy metals in sea cucumber and abalone. At present, people have increasingly high requirements for food hygiene and environment, and thus the problems like water pollution in the process of sea cucumber and abalone production, there transport and storage have drawn a wide attention in the world. In this study, sea cucumber and abalone were randomly selected from the markets of Jinan City. The contents of11kinds of elements, salt and protein were measured after microwave digestion. The nutritional value was evaluated by the beneficial elements and proteins, and the safety was evaluated by harmful heavy metals and salt contents. The study was designed to provide guidelines for people’s consumption.Methods1Sample collection and pretreatmentDifferent kinds of dried and fresh sea cucumber, abalone were collected from supermarkets and farmers’ markets randomly after early investigations to determine the sampling places. Then, the fresh sea cucumber and abalone were dried to maintain the consistency with the other kinds of samples.2DeterminationAfter pretreatments, concentrations of Pb, Cd and Cr in the samples were determined by Graphite furnace Atomic Absorption Spectroph otometer. Ca, Fe, Zn, Cu and Mn were determined by flame Atomic Absorption Spectroph otometer. Hg, Se, As were measured by atomic fluorescence spectrometry. The salt and protein contents were analysed by the ashing method and Kjeldahl method, respectively.Results1The contents of harmful elements in sea cucumber and abalone commercially available in Jinan CityCompared to dry stichopus japonicus, the Pb and Cd contents of live stichopus japonicus were significantly higher, the contents of Cr were significantly lower (P<0.05).Compared with dried abalone, the contents of Pb of live abalone were significantly higher, the contents of As and Cr were significantly lower (P<0.05).Compared with abalone, the contents of Cr in sea cucumber was significantly lower (P<0.05).2The contents of useful elements in sea cucumber and abalone commercially available of Jinan CityCompared to dry stichopus japonicus, the Zn contents of live stichopus japonicus were significantly higher (P<0.05).Compared with dried abalone, the contents of Fe of live abalone were significantly higher (P<0.05).Compared with abalone, the contents of Cu of sea cucumber was significantly lower, the contents of Se and Ca were significantly higher (P<0.05).3The contents of salt and protein in sea cucumber and abalone commercially available of Jinan CityCompared to dry stichopus japonicus, the salt contents of live stichopus japonicus were significantly lower, thethe contents of protein were significantly higher(P<0.05).Compared with dried abalone, the contents of salt of live abalone were significantly lower (P<0.05).Compared with abalone, the contents of salt of sea cucumber was significantly higher, the contents of protein were significantly lower (P<0.05). 4The harmful heavy metals pollution index in sea cucumber and abalone commercially available in Jinan CityThe harmful heavy metals concentrations of all kinds of sea cucumber were not exceeded. According to P, and P%, all kinds of sea cucumbers were not affected by Pb, Cd, Hg, As, Cr pollution5The principal component analysis of Jinan City commercially available sea cucumber and abalone in beneficial elementsFrom the perspective of useful elements to evaluate the nutritional value of sea cucumber and abalone, stichopus japonicus is better than abalone.Conclusions1By Pollution index evaluation, the sea cucumber and abalone products were not significantly polluted by Pb, Cd, Cr, Hg, Mn.2From the perspective of beneficial elements, the contents of beneficial elements of stichopus japonicus were higher, compared with abalone.3In the perspective of salt, higher amount of salt was added in the sea cucumber, compared with abalone in the process of production.4Compared with sea cucumber, the contents of protein in the abalone were significantly higher...