M eat and meat products are an excellent source of essential nutrients with high-quality proteins, fat and mineral. There are a wide variety of meat products including cured meats, patties, nuggets, meatballs and etc. (Aminzare et al., 2016). Lipid oxidation is a major cause of deterioration in meat and meat products due to their high fat content and low water activity leading to loss of nutritional value, unpleasant flavor and texture, and water holding capacity (García-Lomillo et al., 2017; Ding et al., 2015). Cooking of meat involves the formation of hydro-peroxides that can be easily broken down to various volatile organic compounds such as alkanes, alkenes, aldehydes, ketones, alcohols, esters and acids that are responsible for reducing the sensorial quality and leading to oxidative flavors, loss of pigments and vitamins in meat and meat products (García-Lomillo et al., 2017). Heating process disrupt the muscle cell structure, deactivates anti-oxidative enzymes and produces catalytic iron from myoglobin leading to an intense pro-oxidant environment in which both lipids and proteins can be affected. Grinding can destruct muscle cell membranes so the reaction between unsaturated lipids with pro-oxidant substances such as non-heme iron increases lipid oxidation (Gallego et al., 2015). Furthermore, heme pigments (myoglobin and hemoglobin) are also oxidized in a coupled lipid-pigment reaction, which causes a color change. Antioxidants can be added to meat and meat products during processing to delay lipid oxidation. Plant polyphenols and essential oils (EOs) are considered as major natural source of bioactive compounds to increase the shelf life of meat and meat review Article Abstract | Lipid oxidation is one of the most important problems that decrease the shelf life of meat and meat products. Antioxidants are used to reinstate free radicals thereby retarding lipid oxidation, delay development of unpleasant-flavors, and improve color stability.Application of synthetic antioxidants to mitigate oxidative damage may consider unsafe for consumers. Furthermore, the recent growing in the understanding of the consumers about these hazards resulted in the replacement ofsynthetic antioxidants with natural bioactive compounds. Plant materials are rich sources of bioactive phenolic compounds; hence they can be an effective alternative to synthetic antioxidants. This review presents an overview regarding the new advances in the application of natural antioxidant compounds such as herbs, spices, fruits, plant essential oils and extracts in meat and meat products to improvetheir quality and shelf-life.
