Fish have various ways of depositing fat as energy reserves. Some ("fatty") species have a lot of fat deposited in their muscle tissue whereas others ("lean") species may have large liver as their major energy reserve. Yet other species deposit a lot of visceral fat in body cavity. What is the fat content of tilapia muscle, how large is the liver, and do they deposit a lot of visceral fat? If possible, provide me with scientific references.
Tilapia fillet is quite low fat - values I have seen are 1-2%
Don't have HSI values to hand, but livers are not very large (much smaller than the cod for example) and not sure about ipfat
Dear Bjornsson
Generally tilapia deposes a lot of fat in their visceral cavity. For more information you can see the table 3 in the attached paper (AZAZA et al., 2013)
Dear Azaza. Thanks for the publication, and Malcolm for your answer too. So far I've gathered that the tilapia liver is similar in size to salmonids and thus does not represent a major energy deposit. As the muscle is also quite lean, this does not represent much of an energy deposit either, so perhaps it's the visceral fat which is the main energy reserve.
Being a warm-water/tropical species, perhaps there's no great seasonal differences in food availability in the wild, and thus no great need for large internal energy reserves, in contrast to salmonids which keep a lot of energy reserves in the muscles to be used during the winter?
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