Non-meat ingredient, nutritional composition and labeling of domestic processed meat products

The objective of this study was to investigate the contents of meat and non-meat ingredients, calorie, fatty acid composition, and cholesterol contents of processed meat products of which informations are being provided for consumer and partly required for the current labeling system in Korea. A total of sixty-one domestic processed meat products produced from 6 domestic meat companies were collected at the large supermarkets in Suwon city; 1) 31 ham products (3 loin hams, 6 press hams, 20 mixed press hams and 2 fish hams), 26 sausage products (15 pork sausages, 7 mixed sausages and 4 fish sausages) and 4 ground processed meat products. Soy protein and corn starch were widely used as non-meat ingredients for the most of processed meat products. The contents of meat, protein, fat, cholesterol contents, and calories were 75-98, 12-23, 1-16%, 7-50 mg/100 g, and 1,620-3,127 cal/g for ham products and 60-96, 5-17, 3-27%, 5-73 mg/100 g, and 1,271-3,546 cal/g for sausage products, respectively. The saturated (SFA), m ono unsaturated (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) contents of ham products were 31-40, 44-53 and 60-72%, and those of sausage products were 17-38, 34-61, and 13-37%, respectively. The ranges of meat contents and nutritional compositions were considerably broad even in the same type of the meat products. Therefore, the labeling system of the nutritional facts for ham as well as sausage products is necessary to categorize the quality level and thus to give the nutritional information to consumer for better choice of products in market.