The lipid, iron, myoglobin, and hemoglobin contents and the time for extracted lipids to gain 1% weight (a measure of autoxidation potential) were measured in 12 samples of six fish species. These were taken singly and in combination to prepare models to predict the shelf life of frozen minced fish, based on thiobarbituric acid reactive substance levels. By using only the potential for the extracted lipids to autoxidize, a reasonably accurate model was obtained (R* = 0.83). Incorporating some of the compositional factors into the models improved the simple model. These models could be useful in providing fairly rapid estimation of the TBA number based shelf-life of frozen minced fish.

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