Dietary Strategies to Improve Nutritional Value, Oxidative Stability, and Sensory Properties of Poultry Products

Abstract

Consumers demand both safer and more nutritious food products exempt of non-natural origin preservatives or other food additives. In this frame, products with lower fat content and/or a higher ratio in unsaturated fatty acids, especially n-3 fatty acids, are desired because these lipids can help prevent the development of cardiovascular and inflammatory pathologies. The intake of meat products is of interest because they are an excellent source of vitamins and minerals. In addition, the shelf-life of meat products can be extended by the presence of natural antioxidants coming from different sources such as plant extracts. Therefore, different strategies have been studied to improve the nutritional value, oxidative stability, and sensory characteristics of meat products and eggs through different mineral and natural dietary supplements. In comparison to other strategies, dietary supplements present the advantage that first the living animals may efficiently distribute the compounds throughout the tissues and second, the dietary supplementation is safer because the resulting enriched meat products and eggs ensure tolerable amounts in humans. Poultry meats and eggs are widely consumed and their fatty acid profile and tocopherol content can be easily modified through different dietary strategies thus being excellent models to improve their nutritional value and oxidative stability.

Use of recovered frying oils in chicken and rabbit feeds: effect on the fatty acid and tocol composition and on the oxidation levels of meat, liver and plasma

“…In addition, the oxidative stability and shelf life of meat depend on the balance between certain FA (such as PUFA), pro-oxidants and antioxidants (Wood and Enser, 1997;Bou et al, 2009) and therefore can be also altered by the modification of the FA composition. Antioxidant vitamins, such as a-tocopherol (aT) and other tocols, contribute to decrease meat oxidability.…”

Effects of Dietary Lycopene or Tomato Paste on Laying Performance and Serum Lipids in Laying Hens and on Malondialdehyde Content in Egg Yolk upon Storage

“…The most well-known biological effect of LP is its action as a cholesterol-lowering or antioxidant agent (Di Mascio et al, 1989), thus preventing the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein, associated with decreasing the risk of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease in humans (Agarwal and Rao, 1998;Fuhrman et al, 2000;Palozza et al, 2012;Muller et al, 2016). In studies with chickens, dietary LP has been shown to improve meat quality via inhibiting lipid peroxidation and through lowering serum lipids (Leal et al, 1999;Botsoglou et al, 2004;Sahin et al, 2006a,b;Bou et al, 2009;Sun et al, 2014a;Sun et al, 2015).…”

The effect of dietary fat, vitamin E and selenium concentrations on the fatty acid profile and oxidative stability of frozen stored broiler meat

“…Meat enriched with PUFA (especially n-3 PUFA) may be more prone to oxidation of lipids during storage, and, consequently the shelf-life of the final product may be shorter (Bou et al, 2009;Jankowski et al, 2012).…”