Conference on meat derivatives in Food Engineering
On June 11, the University of Azuay, the Faculty of Science and Technology, the School of Food Engineering, the RedU of Cereals and related products, and the Continuing Education Department held the webinar "Meat derivatives as functional foods."
To kick off the event, the Coordinator of the Food Engineering career, María Fernanda Rosales, together with the Director of the Continuous Training Department, Miriam Briones, introduced María Inés Valdez Narváez, speaker of said conference.
Valdez is a Food Engineer from the Universidad del Azuay, a Master's degree in Food Science and Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, and a JAE Intro program fellow to review research practices at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology at the same university.
Currently, she is a laboratory technician in the food processing area at the School of Food Engineering and the owner of an artisan company dedicated exclusively to the production of meat products.
His presentation began with a brief explanation about the background of functional foods, which emerged in Japan in 1980, which were defined by the Japanese with the word FOSHU (Food for Specified Health Uses), that is, foods that have a beneficial effect for the health of consumers such as carrying energy, avoiding diseases and being scientifically proven in terms of their functionality.
Under this premise, he described the categorization of those functional foods into five groups. The first are foods fortified with vitamins and minerals. The second are foods reduced in saturated fat, salt, sugar. The third are foods with prebiotics and rich in dietary fiber. The fourth is foods with probiotics. Lastly, there are foods rich in phytochemicals.
Subsequently, based on this categorization, it defined that meat products count as functional foods as they can be modified or reduced into components that are advantageous or harmful to the health of a consumer.
Therefore, he explained that a meat product is one that has meat as its main ingredient, which in its natural state is a functional food by carrying proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, minerals and vitamins of high biological value.
However, Valdez indicated that these products require a high amount of salt and saturated fat when they are made, the same reason why consumers have lost confidence in their preparation.
For the same reason, Valdez explained that current trends regarding this production process are based on an improvement based on their composition, with the challenge that they carry natural ingredients that have a positive effect on the body; fundamental challenge for the meat industry.
Next, he presented the categorization of these meat products in which are those reduced in salt, fat and nitrites; functional modified with improvement of races and feeding; added with probiotics, prebiotics and antioxidants.
After this, he provided an explanation about the importance, advantages and disadvantages of substituting the components of said meat products according to their categorization to achieve a nutritional level suitable for human consumption.
Finally, he highlighted, there are new lines of research and study to generate healthy products that have good sensory characteristics and are accepted by the consumer.
UDA Correspondent
