Low salt pig-meat products and novel formulations

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   1. Objectives:
   2. Learning goals
   3. Teacher page
2. Section 1: Salt and Human Health
   1. Sodium and human physiology
   2. Trends in salt consumption
   3. Dietary salt as a health hazard
   4. Epidemiological studies
   5. High blood pressure
   6. Stroke
   7. Death from cardiovascular disease
   8. Osteoporosis
   9. Stomach cancer
   10. References
3. Section 2: Salt Content of Pig-meat Products
   1. Salt concentration in different pig-meat products
   2. Low-salt products in Europe
   3. Comparisons between various processed products
   4. References
4. Section 3: Science of salt in pig products
   1. From muscle to meat
   2. Effect of salt content on chemical and physical properties and implications for organoleptic properties
   3. Problems related to meat pH
   4. Effect of salt content on microbiological properties in processed meat products
   5. Consequences of reducing salt content
   6. References
5. Section 4 Low-salt Pig Meat Formulations
   1. General points to consider when manufacturing processed pork
   2. Balancing low salt with substitutes, enhancers and alternatives
   3. Effect of low sodium on eating quality, shelf-life and functional properties
   4. Optimum concentrations
   5. Cooked sausages
   6. Frankfurters
   7. Dry fermented sausage
   8. Ground patties
   9. Dry-cured ham
   10. Restructured meats (wet cured ham)
   11. Bacon
   12. Novel approaches in product formulation
   13. Other approaches
   14. Conclusions
   15. References
6. Discussion
7. Glossary
8. Completion
   1. Comments
   2. Self assessment
   3. Evaluation
9. Acknowledgment

Cooked sausages

• Partial sodium replacement

Replacement of sodium chloride with potassium chloride can be up to 40% without showing significant changes in the taste acceptability (Lilic et al., 2008); more commonly, however, replacement is 20%.

• Salt reduction

In a comparative study on the salt content of different commercial breakfast sausages, salt content was negatively correlated with casing toughness, firmness, meatiness and particle size. Overall liking was positively correlated with firmness, juiciness and pork flavour. Salt reduction below 1.5% had detrimental effects on both sensory quality and the texture of the sausages. However, the presence and amount of other ingredients were not accounted for (Sheard et al., 2010). So it would be difficult to say whether the effects were only due to salt reduction

• Partial sodium replacement with other salts and addition of different hydrocolloids

In an example of this technique, sodium chloride was reduced to 1.5% and a combination of potassium chloride, calcium chloride, locust bean gum, potato starch and κ-carrageenan was used. The main findings were as follows:

- Starch had a notable influence on cooking yield and texture, increasing hardness and resilience as the starch proportion increased.

- Cohesiveness was slightly higher in samples containing only locust bean gum and lower in those with only potato starch.

- Higher cohesiveness and resilience were found when potato starch, κ-carrageenan and KCl were added.

- Presence of locust bean gum produced significantly higher cooking yields.

- Lightness values (reflectance) were higher as potato starch content increased and lower as locust bean gum increased, while yellowness was highest when κ-carrageenan increased (Garcia-Garcia and Totosaus, 2008).