Determination of the fish consumption habits of Elazig province

Although it is not wide spread enough in our country, it is considered important to increase the consumption of fish meat which is cheaper and more nutritious than red meat. Increasing consumption of fishery products and fish meat is gaining importance in terms of human health and healthy generations. Considering the balanced and healthy nutrition problem experienced in the food consumption quality of individuals in our developing country, it is an undeniable fact that the consumption of seafood is not sufficient. The issue should be dealt with as a whole, especially the factors that have a negative impact on seafood consumption, and the negative factor affecting consumption should be identified and solutions to these problems should be presented. The main aim of this study is to find out the relationship between demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income level and education level of the inhabitants of Elazig province and their preferences for seafood consumption. For this purpose, there search area was studied in three groups as high, medium and low income level and each group was chosen on the basis of a neighbourhood sample. Data were analysed by using SPSS® 16 package program which was applied randomly to 306 people, 102 people from each neighbourhood. According to the results of the survey, the preferences of the people living in Elazig in meat consumption were as follows; it was determined that they consumed 26.5% white meat, 24.8% red meat, 7.2% fish meat. The reasons why the participants did not like fish meat were as follows; 24.67% odour, 21.15% awned, 19.39% all, 10.12% aroma was found to be 8.81% cleaning. The most common fish species consumed by survey participants were 31.4% anchovy, 31.4% trout, 10.8% horse mackerel, 7.8% seabass, 6.9% carp, 5.2% seabream, 4.6% bonito and 2.0% other. The season in which the survey participants consumed the most seafood; 56.5% winter, 26.8% all, 8.2% autumn, 4.2% summer, 2.3% spring, 2.0% as none were determined. According to the results of the study, the frequency of consuming fish by consumers was as follows; 28.4% once a month, 25.2% once in fifteen days, 25.2% once / several times a year, 16.3% once a week, 3.3% twice a week and 1.6% was never found. As a result of the study, fish is preferred as fresh with 96.7% and frozen with 3.3%.