HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Aquaculture is facing a strategic challenge to improve feed suitability and support the global increase in fish production. Improvements in diet formulation for sustainable nutritional strategies have focused to date on the partial substitution of marine resources by plant resources but will now include other alternative feedstuffs. Growth trials and body composition data provide valuable indicators of fish nutritional status, while omics technologies may contribute to a better understanding of fish nutrition and help to demonstrate how feed and nutrients act in fish metabolism. Metabolomic approaches give an insight into fish metabolism through a non‐targeted analysis of metabolites in tissues or biofluids that involve multiple factors affecting fish, such as nutrition. In this review, we highlight the outcomes of publications in metabolomics applied to fish nutrition. We explain the concept of metabolomics and discuss specific technical considerations related to sample type, sampling and sample preparation. We show how metabolomic studies help to elucidate the impact of nutrition on fish fillet composition and fish metabolism. Finally, we describe the potential applications of metabolomic approaches for the non‐invasive monitoring of fish nutritional status.