Functional Meat Products: The New Consumer's Demand

In recent years, special attention of consumers to health and nutrition has led to the development of "functional foods" which is a new approach to accomplish a healthier status, therefore, reducing the risk of diseases. Changing consumer demand has influenced meat products as an important functional food. Several approaches have been proposed to produce functional meat products through reduce/deletion of some component such as fat and sodium or adding a component such as probiotics or fortification. Manufacturing low-fat meat products is achievable through replacement of fat with carbohydrate or protein-based replacers, water and vegetable oils. It is also possible to reduce sodium chloride in meat products by reducing the size of crystals and full or partial replacement of sodium chloride with other chloride salts. Among various strains of probiotic to incorporate in meat products, spore former probiotics such as Bacillus spp. is the most reasonable choice due to their stability during processing. Despite the desirable elevation of the nutritional value of food, it should be taken into consideration that manipulation of the formulation can cause many technological difficulties or/and may negatively impact sensory properties of food due to unacceptable and undesirable changes. The empiric evidences represented that taste, as a major factor in sensory features, is dramatically fundamental for functional food acceptance by consumers. In this review, the major aspects that should be considered in the context to retain sensory and textural attributes of meat-based functional foods are discussed.