![Sample our Food Science & Technology journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5936/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Food-Science-Technology.jpg"})
Abstract
Evidence for the health-promoting effects of food rich in n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) is reviewed. Pork is an important meat source for humans. According to a report by the US Department of Agriculture (http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics), the pork consumption worldwide in 2011 was about 79.3 million tons, much higher than that of beef (48.2 million tons). Pork also contains high levels of unsaturated fatty acids relative to ruminant meats (Enser, M., Hallett, K., Hewett, B., Fursey, G. A. J. and Wood, J. D. Citation(1996). Fatty acid content and composition of English beef, lamb, and pork at retail. Meat Sci. 44:443–458). The available literature indicates that the levels of eicosatetraenoic and docosahexaenoic in pork may be increased by fish-derived or linseed products, the extent of which being dependent on the nature of the supplementation. Transgenic pigs and plants show promise with high content of n-3 PUFA and low ratio of n-6/n-3 fatty acids in their tissues. The approaches mentioned for decreasing n-6/n-3 ratios have both advantages and disadvantages. Selected articles are critically reviewed and summarized.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Professor W. Bruce Currie (Dept. of Animal Science, Cornell University) for helping us in editing this manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by grants from the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (10151064001000031), the earmarked fund for Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System (CARS-36), the National “973” Project of China (2012CB124706–4), and contracts 53-K06-5-10 and 58-1950-9-001 from the USDA Research Service.