Assessment of the Nutritional Value of Cultured Sea Cucumber Apostichopus japonicus

ABSTRACT

The sea cucumber (Apostichopus japonicus) is a high-priced and appreciated food. Output of cultured sea cucumber has been increasing in China. From a nutritional point of view, there is still limited data on the chemical composition of cultured sea cucumber from pond and cage aquaculture. Therefore, the nutritional value of sea cucumber from 4 important aquaculture regions of Dalian, Yantai, Qingdao, and Putai in China were evaluated in the present work. The proximate composition, except for protein, and the profiles of amino acid and fatty acid were significantly different among the aquaculture regions, especially, saturated fatty acids (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). The cultured sea cucumbers were rich in glutamine (66.90–71.60 g kg⁻¹), glycine (54.30–58.90 g kg⁻¹), and leucine (29.20–32.40 g kg⁻¹) and showed a high content in PUFA (35.26%–46.47%), especially eicosapentaenoic (EPA, 10.04%–16.04%). All cultured sea cucumber have the recommended essential amino acid/total amino acid (0.33–0.35), lysine/arginine (0.66–0.74), and n-6/n-3 ratio (0.52–1.88) for good health status of humans and very low level of atherogenic and thrombogenic indices (0.20–0.36 and 0.21–0.29, respectively). The results indicate that the cultured sea cucumber has a nutritional value perfectly compatible with nutritious and healthy diets

KEYWORDS:

• Cultured sea cucumber
• Apostichopus japonicus
• nutritional value
• amino acids
• fatty acids

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD0901004), the Science & Technology Innovation Fund of Dalian (2019J12SN61), and the Key Science and Technology Program of Liaoning Province (2020JH1/10200001).