Malaysia's seafood consumption
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Malaysian's rely on seafood as their main source of animal protein, and is in fact the highest consumer of seafood in the Southeast Asia region, both in terms of per capita intake and percentage of protein. Between 1960 and 1990, an average Malaysian’s protein intake from marine products grew from 49% to 62% (Abu Talib et al. 2003a) of the total protein count. In 2004, Malaysia's per capita consumption of seafood was 45.4kg, in comparison to Indonesia (21.6kg), Thailand (32.7kg), Philippines (27kg), and Singapore (23kg) (Dey et al. 2007, Tey et al. 2009). In 2010, Malaysia's per capita consumption is expected to increase to 56kg (Ministry of Agriculture, 1999) and with a total population of 28.3million, (Department of Statistics, 2010) we would have consumed more than 1.58 billion kg of seafood in 2010 alone. |