The nutritional characteristics and health-oriented advances of meat and meat products

Abstract

Meat has several health benefits, as it contains proteins with high biological value, vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids. However, high consumption of red meat and meat products has been associated with the emergence of chronic diseases, due to the lipid profile of animal fat and compounds added to the formulation during processing, including NaCl, nitrite, and phosphate. This chapter will address some strategies for providing healthier properties to meat and meat products. The improvement of the nutritional quality of meat by modifying the animals' diet will be discussed, and some strategies to reduce NaCl levels, animal fat, phosphate, and nitrite, and to improve the lipid profile of meat products will also be presented. In addition, some alternatives to enrich meat products with compounds with health benefits will also be discussed.