As one of the food sources, fish provides sufficient nutrition to humans. Diverse nutrients in fish make fish an important nutrient source available easily across the globe. Fish is proven to possess several health benefits, such as anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, wound healing, neuroprotection, cardioprotection, and hepatoprotection properties. Fish proteins, such as immunoglobulins, act as defense agents against viral and bacterial infections and prevent protein-calorie malnutrition. Besides, fish oil constituents, such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), regulate various signaling pathways, such as nuclear factor kappa B pathway, Toll-like receptor pathway, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) pathway, and peroxisome proliferators activated receptor (PPAR) pathways. In this review, the literature about health benefits of fish consumption are accumulated from PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and the mechanistic action of health benefits are summarized. Fish consumption at least twice per week as part of a healthy diet is beneficial for a healthy heart. More advances in this field could pose fish as a major nutrient source of foods.
Food consumption determines the nutritional status and the health of the population, and in turn, food consumption is determined by production and distribution. Apart from providing nutrients, foods provide a host of other constituents that positively impact health (Slavin and Lloyd, 2012). The growth, development, and health of the human body are influenced by the food we eat. These diets providing nutrition are regarded as the environmental factors that benefit the growth of the human body (Chen et al., 2018). Specific guidelines and goals on dietary plans would help to attain nutritional adequacy. In particular, these dietary guidelines could benefit those highly susceptible to pathological conditions and improve their metabolism. To formulate nutritionally suitable diets, a variety of foods are available within the range of common people. Complete knowledge of the nutritionally based diet could decrease the morbidity and mortality due to cardiovascular diseases, cancer, etc. Amongst those foods with high nutritional value, fish tanks top with enormous health benefiting action through its nutrition arsenal.
Consumption of fish is popular in daily human meals. Fish is also well known to be rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids with functional effects (Zuraini et al., 2006). It has been studied that dietary supplements with fish benefit for treating many inflammatory–associated conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis, and hyperlipidemia (Stenson et al., 1992; Wang et al., 2006; Eslick et al., 2009, Siscovick et al., 2017). Besides, reports by Je et al., 2005, Zuraini et al., 2006 showed that fish protein hydrolysates and peptides had been commonly investigated for antioxidant activities. Fish hydrolysates are the breakdown products of the conversion of fish proteins into smaller peptides with functional effects. The different functional effects were closely linked to the amino acids and their sequences (Chen et al., 1998). The peptide fractions’ molecular weight ranging from 270 to 1800 Da was reported as the antioxidative activity (Chalamaiah et al., 2012). To date, the investigation of meat was more focused on the appearance and sensory, lacking the consideration of the therapeutic effect of animal meat. The proportion of ocean and land in the world was approximately 7:3, indicating that the ocean source was huge and unpredictable. Therefore, research on fish is expected to be brilliant due to the fact that the fish market is expanding enormously in the world (Chalamaiah et al., 2012). Taken together, fish is a kind of meat in the ocean and freshwater, essential for bioactive investigation. However, the pharmacological analysis of fish remains scarce. (Chalamaiah et al., 2012). Fish has potential therapeutic efficacy as complementary medicine. Numerous studies suggested that fish and fish-derived products could be a promising candidate for many health-promoting effects. Li et al., 2020, Ruxton, 2011 ever systematically summarized that fish intake could perform health benefits to the human body with food safety. However, reports focused on the discussion of the comparison between beneficial and the harmful effects of fish consumption, lacked high quality prospective studies on the potential mechanisms of the health benefits of corresponding fish bioactive constituents.
Additionally, several reviews about the health benefits of fish consumption were outdated. Various studies undertaken on fish for its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotection, cardioprotection, and hepatoprotection properties. It also discussed various pathways regulated by the fish and its active components present in fish oil.
Global consumption of fish has doubled in recent times. Fish is enriched with omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins D and B2. The presence of omega-3 fatty acids boosts fish’s health benefits by improving its antioxidant, antiinflammatory properties. Extensive studies have documented the efficacy of sea bass on various disease prevention. Although some studies claim that increased fish consumption could lead to toxicity, the enormous health benefits make it the right choice as a nutrient-rich food.