ENRICHMENT OF POULTRY PRODUCTS WITH FUNCTIONAL INGREDIENTS

Abstract

Primary role of food is to provide nutritive stuffs in sufficient amounts to meet nutritive requirements. However, recent scientific findings confirm assumptions that particular food or its ingredients had positive physiological and psychological effects on health. Functional food is referred to food rich in ingredients, having beneficial effects on one or more functions in an organism. By consuming functional food consumers can expect some health benefits. Production of poultry products as functional food is getting more important on foreign markets while portion of such products on domestic food market is insignificant. The aim of this paper is to present possibilities for enrichment of poultry products, such as broiler and turkey meat and chicken eggs, as they can be characterized as functional food. Functional ingredients in poultry products are polyunsaturated fatty acids (LNA, EPA and DHA) and antioxidants. Enrichment of poultry products with the stated ingredients that are beneficial for human health is subject of many researches, and only recently have researches been directed towards assessment of market sustainability of such products.

Keywords

• poultry products
• functional food
• selenium
• fatty acids
• carnosine