Abstract
This review focuses on the importance of developing meat products with healthier lipid content and strategies such as the use of structured lipids to develop these enriched products. The review also conducts a critical analysis of the use of vibrational spectroscopy as a tool to further these developments. Meat and meat products are extensively recognized and consumed in the world. They are an important nutritional contribution in our diet. However, their consumption has also been associated with some negative consequences for health due to some of its components. There are new trends in the design of healthy meat products focusing mainly on improving their composition. From among the different strategies, improving lipid content is the one that has received the most attention. A novel development is the formation of lipid materials based on structured lipids such emulsion gels (EGs) or oil-bulking agents (OBAs) that offer attractive applications in the reformulation of health-enhanced meat products. A deeper interpretation is required of the complicated relationship between the structure of their components and their properties in order to obtain structured lipids and healthier meat products with improved lipid content and acceptable characteristics. To this end, vibrational spectroscopy techniques (Raman and infrared spectroscopy) have been demonstrated to be suitable in the elucidation of the structural characteristics of lipid materials based on structured lipids (EGs or OBAs) and the corresponding reformulated health-enhanced meat products into which these fat replacers have been incorporated. Future research on these structures and how they correlate to certain technological properties could help in selecting the best lipid material to achieve specific technological properties in healthier meat products with improved lipid content.