Impact of the Addition of and on the Physicochemical and Sensory Quality of Cooked Meat Products.

The use of proteins from insects, plants, microalgae, fungi or bacteria as an alternative to proteins of animal origin such as meat, fish, eggs or milk can meet the worldwide protein demand in the future. As the consumption of whole insects might be problematic or unacceptable for many consumers, especially in European countries, the use of homogenized insects or protein extracts from insects for the production of products might be a possibility to overcome general acceptability problems. However, the quality criteria of these products have to be comparable with consumers' expectations with regard to known products. Therefore, in the present study, we produced a meat product, replaced 10% and 20% of the pork with homogenized larvae of and , and determined different physicochemical and sensory parameters at production and during modified atmosphere storage for 21 days. Additionally, the alteration of different bacteria species during this storage was analyzed in challenge tests. After production, the addition of insects resulted in higher cooking losses and pH values in the products with 20% insects, higher pH and yellowness, lower lightness, protein and hardness results in the products, as well as higher yellowness and lower protein and hardness values in the cooked meat products with . During modified atmosphere storage, the color differences principally remained, whereas the concentrations of inoculated , and were not influenced by the addition of insects to the cooked meat products. The sensory results of the insect products, especially at higher concentrations and with , worsened during modified atmosphere storage. The addition of homogenized insect larvae, especially at higher concentrations and particularly of , influences different physicochemical and sensory parameters of the cooked meat products.