The 21st-century consumer is highly demanding when it comes to the health benefits of food and food products. In the pursuit of attracting these consumers and easing the rise in demand for high-quality meat products, the processed meat sector is intensely focused on developing reformulated, low-fat, healthy meat products. Meat and meat products are considered the primary sources of saturated fatty acids in the human diet. Therefore, these reformulation strategies aim to improve the fatty acid profile and reduce total fat and cholesterol, which can be achieved by replacing animal fat with plant-based oils; it could be performed as direct inclusion of these oils or pre-emulsified oils. However, emulsions offer a viable option for incorporating vegetable oils while avoiding the multiple issues of direct inclusion of these oils in meat products. Processed meat products are popular worldwide and showing a gradually increasing trend of consumption. Various types of plant-based oils have been studied as fat replacers in meat products. This review will focus on possible methods to reduce the saturated fatty acid content in meat products.
K E Y W O R D Sanimal fat substitution, emulsified meat products, emulsion, plant-based oil, saturated fatty acid
INTRODUCTIONFood delivers health-promoting nutrients and bioactive compounds, provides energy for growth, functions as a structural component, and participates in all metabolic processes (Hygreeva et al., 2014). Meat and meat products as components of the human diet provide an important source of proteins with high biological value and nutrients (i.e., vitamins, essential amino acids, fatty acids, and soluble minerals) essential for biochemical and physiological stability (Kausar et al., 2019). However, the perception of meat fat as being high in saturated fatty acids (SFA) has led to the belief that meat, particularly red meat, should be avoided. The scientific rationale for decreasing fat intake in the diet, and, consequently, even if misguidedly, meat consumption, is the association between a high intake of SFA and the incidence of physiological disorders, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood lipids, high cholesterol level, and cardiovascular diseases (Islam et al., 2019;Kumar et al., 2017). Recent data published by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that 39.5 million deaths out of 54.7 million global deaths are mainly due to noncommunicable diseases (WHO, 2018a). Such concerns have prompted the WHO to establish future recommendations for replacing SFA in meat products (López-Pedrouso et al., 2020), reinforcing dietary guidelines to reduce fat consumption, especially SFA (Sacks et al., 2017). Therefore, the
