Fish fermentation has been one of the oldest

methods of preservation used not only in the

Philippines but also in most Asian countries.
Fermentation is generally the transformation of
organic substances into simpler compounds such
as peptide, amino acids, and other nitrogenous
compounds either by the action of microorganisms
or by the action of enzymes. The addition of salt
in sufficient concentration inhibits the growth of
putrefactive microorganisms that can produce
offensive odors in the product (Thonthaiand and
Gildberg 2005; Sanchez 2008). The process
involves the addition of salt to fish at a ratio of 1:3
and its fermentation in earthen jars for 6-12 months
at ambient temperature. Fish sauce is one of the
fermented fish products that are widely produced in
most Asian countries. Philippine fish sauce (patis)
has a typical straw yellow to amber brown color
that contains water-soluble substances, principally
peptides and amino acids, resulting from the
fermentation process.

Antioxidative activity has been found in a

number of fermented fishery products such as
shrimp waste hydrolysate (Guerard et al. 2002),
fermented blue mussel (Jung et al. 2005) and
shrimp paste (Peralta et al. 2005; Peralta et al.
2008). Peptides and amino acids are important
contributors to the flavor and aroma of fermented
products (Mackie et al. 1972; Raksakulthai and
Haard 1992; Lopetcharat et al. 2001), but they can
also be naturally occurring antioxidants that can both function as a primary antioxidant (Kitts and
Weiller
2003). A number of amino acids such as tryptophan
and histidine (Houlihan and Ho 1985); glycine and
alanine (Hui-Chun et al. 2003) have been found to
exhibit antioxidative property. Tyrosine and lysine
are generally accepted to be antioxidants (Wang
and Gonzales de Mejia 2005) and are believed to
be important metal chelators in fish (Hutlin 1992).
Maillard reaction products (MRPs) are nonenzymatic
browning reactions between sugars and
amino acids or peptides that occur in fermented
fish products. It is believed that these MRPs are
responsible for the color development in fish
sauce (Saisithi 1994). High antioxidant and radical
scavenging activities have been detected in the fish
sauce Ishiru (Harada et al. 2002; Michihata 2003)
are attributed to melanoidinin, end-product of the
Maillard reaction process that was suggested as a
compound exhibiting antioxidative activity (Moon
et al. 2002). Other Maillard reaction compounds
such as sugar–lysine (Wijewickreme et al. 1999;
Jing and Kitts 2004), glucose-glycine (Yoshimura et
al. 1997), and sugar-protein (Benjakul et al. 2004)
model systems have also been found to possess
antioxidative activity.