"Comparative Assessment of the Proximate Composition and Safety of Commonly Consumed Fish Stock in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. Nutritional and Quality Evaluation of Three Economically Important Fish Species in Ado Ekiti"

Fish are bioindicators of pollution in an aquatic environment.Fish stock are basically consumed based on taste preference and affordability as against the nutritional composition.This study investigated the quality of three commonly consumed fish species in Ado Ekiti through proximate analysis of the frozen samples, heavy metal assessment and microbial count of the smoked samples using standard procedures.Fish samples collected from two popular markets were identified as Scomber scombrus (local name: Titus), Merluccius merluccius (local name: Panla), Clupea harengus (local name: Shawa).The nutritional composition of the fish samples showed that Scomber scombrus had the highest quantity of fat while M.merluccius had the significantly highest (p<0.05)fibre and Clupea harengus had the highest protein.Protein composition in the three fish species ranged from (19.7230.122)% to (26.1650.166)% across both markets.The smoked fish samples examined for microbial count which include total bacterial count, total bacterial count(TBC), total fungi count (TFC) and total coliform count (TCC) showed that all the samples were laden with bacteria as TBC across all the species ranged from (4.1900.015)105CFU/g-(9.4660.020)105CFU/gwere higher than the permissible limit recommended by WHO.Heavy metals were evident in the smoked fish in values within WHO permissible limits.This suggest that the nutrient composition of these fish is species-dependent regardless of the location, also the smoked fish can pose health danger if consumed directly due to the presence of microbes which may be airborne or be introduced during fish processing.Hence there is a need for appropriate bodies to ensure adequate hygiene on the part of vendors who market smoked fish in the community.