1. What is the main objective? Challenges in Traditional Meat Products
HIGHVALFOOD
‘The Application of Modern Proteomic and Metabolomic Methodologies in the Assessment of High Added-Value Traditional Meat Products’
What is the main objective?
The project is based on recent advances in mass spectrometry and data analysis to develop modern proteomic approaches suitable in the assessment of traditional foodstuffs.
The following objectives are addressed: (i) Development of a label-free quantitative proteomic method to identify and quantify novel biologically active peptides and (ii) study of the peptides generated at different time intervals during the processing of traditional Spanish dry-cured ham to correlate with the time of processing and use as safety and quality markers of the final product.
About HIGHVALFOOD
HIGHVALFOOD is a Research Project funded by FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG Marie Curie European Programme and created as a support for training and career development of researchers.
Challenges in Traditional Meat Products
Dry-cured ham contains elevated amounts of sodium chloride (5-6%) that makes many of those products non recommended for consumers having cardiovascular troubles, especially hypertension. The possibility to find peptides exerting antihypertensive, renin-inhibitory, opioid, or antioxidant activities would contribute to a hope for a better possibility of consumption by mild hypertensive consumers.
On the other hand, a standardised methodology to control the time of curing and so the final quality of traditional food products such as dry-cured ham is necessary to assure that fraudulent or accidental mislabelling does not arise. This would guarantee its safety and quality making them more attractive to consumers and improving its export markets for meat industry.
Why is this important?
Hypertension or elevated blood pressure (BP) is a global health concern, estimated to affect up to 30 % of the adult population in developed and developing countries. Hypertension represents a major burden on annual global healthcare costs. Across the European Union, the estimated cost of cardiovascular disease is in the neighbourhood of 169 billion Euros annually, with healthcare accounting for 62% of this amount. It is thought that prevention through lifestyle choices and early treatment for individuals with mild hypertension can significantly reduce global health-care costs as hypertension is defined as a controllable risk factor of CVD. At present there is a range of synthetic drugs on the market for treatment of hypertension but they are believed to have certain side effects such as cough, taste disturbances and skin rashes. Therefore, search for non-toxic ACE inhibitors or renin inhibitors as alternatives to synthetic drugs is of great interest among researchers.
Further, a better control of the processing chain of these traditional products through proteomics tools would guarantee its safety and quality making them more attractive to consumers.
Contact
Leticia Mora
Fidel Toldrá