Fibre-based functional meat products

Epidemiological studies have demonstrated a relationship between a diet containing an excess of energy-dense food rich in fats and sugar and the emergence of a range of chronic diseases, including colon cancer, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and several other disorders [12, 49, 9, 77, 13, 14]. As the presence of fibre in food produces a diminution in their caloric content, thus, an increase in the level of dietary fibre in the daily diet has been recommended [32, 47, 13). Studies have proven that dietary fibres have the potential to reduce blood low density lipoprotein cholesterol [18], risk of diabetes mellitus type 2 [94], coronary heart disease [7], blood pressure [87], obesity [56] and colorectal cancer [79]. Fibre is suitable for addition to meat products and has previously been used in cooked meat products to increase the cooking yield due to its water-binding and fat-binding properties and to improve texture [23, 13, 15]. Fibre from various types of sources like vegetables, legumes, cereal byproducts, fruit, etc. have been studied alone or combined with other ingredients for formulations of reduced-fat-high-fibre meat products, largely ground and restructured products [28, 57] and meat emulsions [22, 21, 40, 53, 55, 15]. This paper reviews and discusses some of the findings published in recent years regarding fibre-based functional meat products.