Nutritional properties of meat peptides and proteins: impact of processing

Because of their high content of well-balanced indispensable amino acids, and their high digestibility, proteins from meat have a high nutritional quality. New criteria for the evaluation of this quality, such as digestion rate and potentiality to release bioactive peptides, have led to a renewed interest in meat products. Indeed meat proteins, which can be considered as a source of rapidly digested proteins, could help to counteract muscle wasting in the elderly. Furthermore, the occurrence in meat of native bioactive peptides, such as carnosine and glutathione, but also the release of antihypertensive peptides during digestion could be of interest in the context of preventive nutrition. Before being consumed, meat undergoes a series of biochemical reactions, and technological treatments, leading to protein denaturation (loss of quaternary and tertiary structure), oxidation, aggregation which may affect the amino acid bioavailability, the release of peptides, but also the digestion rate. The significance of these modifications and their impact on the nutritional quality of meat proteins require further investigations.