review · Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition
Aquaculture intensification often uses high-fat diets to supply extra energy, substitute protein, and boost growth in the short term. However, excessive dietary fat leads to poor feed efficiency, impaired liver and immune function, reduced antioxidant capacity, and ultimately lower farm revenue. High-fat diets can trigger endoplasmic reticulum stress, suppress liver autophagy, and cause liver lipid accumulation. They also harm the intestinal barrier by causing inflammation, oxidative stress, metabolic disorders, and microbiota imbalances. To counter these challenges, dietary manipulation and feed additives can be used. These strategies lower blood lipids, lessen hepatic lipid deposition, improve mitochondrial activity, and strengthen immune and antioxidant defences. Furthermore, dietary additives and phytochemicals have been shown to reduce liver lipogenesis, curb apoptosis, and regulate inflammatory responses in affected fish.
High-fat feed is widely used in commercial fish farming to save costs and accelerate growth, but it often causes severe health problems in stock. Understanding how excessive fats damage fish organs and identifying corrective dietary interventions helps farmers safeguard fish welfare, maintain steady yields, and prevent financial losses in intensive aquaculture operations.
This review highlights potential applications for aquafeed manufacturers and fish farmers seeking to formulate balanced, high-energy feeds. Incorporating functional feed additives, such as phytochemicals, could enable the development of safer feed products that prevent metabolic and liver disorders. As the evidence relies on a synthesis of existing literature, commercial feed formulations would represent early-stage development to applied testing depending on the specific additive chosen.
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In the era of intensification of fish farms, the high-fat diet (HFD) has been applied to promote growth and productivity, provide additional energy and substitute partial protein in fish feeds. Certainly, HFD within specific concentrations was found to be beneficial in boosting fish performance throughout a short-term feeding. However, excessive dietary fat levels displayed vast undesirable impacts on growth, feed efficiency, liver function, antioxidant capacity and immune function and finally reduced the economic revenue of cultured fish. Moreover, studies have shown that fish diets containing a high level of fats resulted in increasing lipid accumulation, stimulated endoplasmic reticulum stress and suppressed autophagy in fish liver. Investigations showed that HFD could impair the intestinal barrier of fish via triggering inflammation, metabolic disorders, oxidative stress and microbiota imbalance. Several approaches have been widely used for reducing the undesirable influences of HFD in fish. Dietary manipulation could mitigate the adverse impacts triggered by HFD, and boost growth and productivity via reducing blood lipids profile, attenuating oxidative stress and hepatic lipid deposition and improving mitochondrial activity, immune function and antioxidant activity in fish. As well, dietary feed additives have been shown to decrease hepatic lipogenesis and modulate the inflammatory response in fish. Based on the literature, previous studies indicated that phytochemicals could reduce apoptosis and enhance the immunity of fish fed with HFD. Thus, the present review will explore the potential hazards of HFD on fish species. It will also provide light on the possibility of employing some safe feed additives to mitigate HFD risks in farmed fish.
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DOI: 10.1111/jpn.13759
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