Overall whiteness slightly decreased (P < 0.05) for all treatments.
The decrease with added fibre was the lowest (P < 0.05)
and it was due to lower L. However, lower a and b mitigated
the decrease of whiteness for fibre treatment. Although L increased
while a decreased for the oil treatment, the large increase
in b resulted in a lower (P < 0.05) whiteness. The fibre + oil treatment
showed the lowest (P < 0.05) whiteness. Although this treatment
showed the highest L and the lowest a, it also had the
greatest b, resulting in the lowest whiteness. Similar to the present
study, Sánchez-Alonso et al. (2007b) found a slight decrease in
whiteness from 83.5 with 0 g/100 g of fibre to 79.6 with 6 g/100 g
of fibre added to giant squid surimi. In another study, Sánchez-
Alonso et al. (2007a) showed that wheat fibre added to restructured
hake and horse mackerel increases whiteness in proportion
to the amount of fibre added. The differences are most likely due
to the type of fibre and quality of surimi. Fibre may have a whitening
effect on low quality surimi, whereas it may detract from the
whiteness of high quality surimi.