Protein-based hydrogelled emulsions and their application as fat replacers in meat products: A review.

Recent consumers' concerns about diet and its health benefits has triggered a reduction in consumption of foods rich in sugar, fat, salt, and chemical additives. As a result, an expanded market for functional foods has arisen. In particular, high-fat foods normally composed by saturated fatty acids, cholesterol and trans-fatty acids have been reformulated to be healthier. The primary source of saturated fat ingested by humans includes meats and their by-products that have animal fat as lipid source. The reformulation of these products therefore represents an important strategy to make them healthier for human consumption. Substituting solid fat by unsaturated oils usually affects the texture of the products, and therefore, new structuring methods must be developed to provide vegetable oils a similar characteristic to solid fats and improve their functional and health-related properties. Among these structural models, gelled emulsions (GE) show great potential to be used as healthier lipid ingredients in low-calorie and reduced-fat products, including healthier meat products. This review addresses the GE properties to be used as structuring agent, their in vitro bioaccessibility in meat products and effect on technological, sensorial, microstructural and microbiological characteristics.

Inulin gelled emulsion as a fat replacer and fiber carrier in healthier Bologna sausage.

The effects of gelled emulsions (GE) used as animal fat replacers in terms of the nutritional, technological, and sensory properties of Bologna sausages during 60 days of chilled storage have been studied. Samples with GE added exhibited a fat reduction of 31%. Sausages with GE had higher values of L* and lower values of a* compared to the control. Harder sausages were obtained by the addition of GE. Higher lipid oxidation rates were found with increasing amounts of GE in the reformulated products. In addition, the relaxation time was not affected by the reformulation. All samples were deemed acceptable by consumer tests. However, CATA (Check-all-that-apply) tests showed that Bolognas formulated with partial or total pork fat replaced with GE were described as rubbery, not very spicy and firm, appeared to be dry and opaque, and had an aftertaste. Chilled storage significantly affected the Thiobarbituric Acid Reactive Substances (TBARS) values and slightly affected the pH values, texture, color, and NMR data. An important result is that the panelists did not detect the oxidation results in relation to the TBARS values, and the addition of a GE with inulin as dietary fiber may be a good strategy to make Bologna sausage healthier.

Using dynamic sensory techniques to determine drivers of liking in sodium and fat-reduced Bologna sausage containing functional emulsion gels.

Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) and Temporal Check-all-that-apply (TCATA) are fast and dynamic descriptive techniques for sensory characterization of food. The temporal perception involved during the consumption of reformulated meat products are rarely considered and, in this context, the aim of the present work was to evaluate the influence of salt and fat reduction on Bologna sausage with addition of emulsion gel in the dynamic sensorial perception by using TDS and TCATA methods considering overall liking. After the dynamic sensory characterization tasks, consumers rated their liking using a 9-point hedonic scale. The findings showed that fat and salt reduction, and the addition of emulsion gels as fat replacers affected the sensory characteristics of the Bologna sausages. Regarding the methods, both studies collected the variations between samples with a great correlation between data. The TDS and TCATA curves revealed that texture attributes (firm and soft) were dominant at the beginning of the evaluation for all samples. TCATA also showed that juicy was dominant in the first 15 s of eating period. Related to overall liking, control sample (2% salt and 20% pork back fat) presented the highest scores (7.25 for TDS and 7.24 for TCATA) and Bolognas sausages with emulsion gels and reduced in salt were less accepted (4.95 for TDS and 5.86 for TCATA). Bologna flavor was the major attribute related to liking and fat flavor the main driver of disliking. Results from the present work suggest that dynamic sensorial methods are effective tools to characterize reformulated meat products.