Meat Products -Chemistry, Consumption and Health Aspects

CAYRÉ, M, E.; CASTRO, M.P.

Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Lugar: New York; Año: 2021 p. 251

978-1-53618-978-0

Meat products are food comodities that have a long history amongst humanity, being intimately associated with technological advances throughout that timeline. According to their traditional preparation types, they can be classified as: salted and/or marinated, but not dried; dried, not fermented; fermented semi-dried/dried; smoked; cooked and/or candied. These preparation types, albeit traditional, can be extrapolated to industrialized meat products found worldwide. It could be said, without much wisdom, that meat represents a multifaceted raw ingredient: one that can be highly nutritious yet hazardous, easily fermentable but also spoiled, loved and rejected, and so forth. Meat consumption elicits highly ambivalent feelings. The so-called meat paradox describes that most people like to eat meat but they do not want to be connected with its morally troublesome aspects, like the suffering and killing of animals. In the light of this dichotomy, Ph.D. Nene Keklik presented a comprehensive review on red meat production and consumption, summarizing key findings of the studies conducted on the subject while searching for solutions in the frame of human health, animal welfare, and environment (Chapter 1). In addition to meat itself, the slaughtering procedures involve a cascade of events in which safety and quality assurance in the production chain are of paramount importance. A description of the main official control activities, as well as the mandatory requirements for the slaughter manager in an Italian medium-scale slaughterhouse, according to the current European legislation, has been extensively aborded by Ph.D. Pierina Visciano and her co-authors. This chapter also embraces the description of the sampling procedure of domestic swine carcasses susceptible to Trichinella spp. infestation and its reference methods of analysis (Chapter 2). Western societies are navigating the post-truth era, a period in which consumers? opinion is mostly driven by an amassing of information via cherry-picking, falacies and faked news, rather than by science-based nutritional policymaking. In the slipstream of these events, dietary guidelines are progressively depicting (red) meat and meat products as health-damaging. Among a large assortment of food components, antimicrobial agents are in the eye of the storm. Microbial spoilage of meat products can be considered as a key challenge in the meat industry. Consequently, the use of food additives in meat products is essential to reduce microbial loads and to inhibit important foodborne pathogens which are responsible for serious illnesses. In Chapter 3, Ph.D. Joana Barbosa and her co-authors explored the main chemical additives used in meat and meat products, the legal aspects and health-associated problems of their use, as well as the advantages/disadvantages of potential natural alternatives.On the other hand, the resurgence of the concepts ?bacteria for health? and ?good microbes? has been taking place in recent years. Microorganisms have always been involved in food production, however, their role in human diets has recently become a hot topic since science is unravelling their benefits as part of our natural microbiota. An increasing positive correlation between cultured food and healthy diets, whereby bacteria, molds and yeasts are considered advantageous, has uplifted their public image. In light of the above, the relevance of microbial cultures on the safety of fermented sausages is highlighted in Chapter 4, where our research group has extensively reviewed the microbiological and chemical risks associated with their production. We have also explored the most useful strategies -comprising microbial cultures- to reduce biogenic amines content, exert functional properties, and thus, enhance nutritional value of the end product. Part of the negative aspect of meat products is their fat content. Scientific evidences have proved the incidence of high caloric fatty diets on obesity, hypertension, and coronary heart disease. Thereby, low-fat meat products with healthy lipid profiles are in the spotlight of food technologists. Some of the most pertinent approaches to obtain healthful meat products with low-fat content and/or with an improved lipid profile have been revised in Chapter 5 by Ph.D. María Alicia Judis and her co-authors. Besides, the impact of fat substitution on technological properties and acceptance of the new products by consumers has been addressed in their contribution. Eventually, both the negative and positive facets of meat consumption have been picked up by consumers. For this reason, it is mandatory to rethink the role of meat in human nutrition and to promote their benefits among their drawbacks. In this sense, bioactive compounds in foods have been gaining interest, and processes to consider them for public health recommendations are being discussed with scientific and medical consensus. Several studies have shown that bioactive compounds, together with novel technologies and ingredients, could be used to create a new generation of meat products geared towards the emerging needs of consumers. Our research group has reviewed in Chapter 6 these expanding possibilities and their future perspectives for the meat industry.