ABSTRACT
Meat is a major source of food proteins with high biological value. Also, meat is an excellent source of some valuable nutrients such as minerals and vitamins. However, consumers often associate meat with negative health images. This is due in part to the high fat content in meat and the fact that red meat is regarded as a cancer-promoting food (Ovesen 2004a,b; Valsta et al. 2005). In addition, a high intake of sodium chloride, which is added to most meat products during processing, has been linked to hypertension (Ruusunen & Puolanne 2005). For these reasons, ingestion of meat and meat products is often avoided to reduce the risk of cancer, obesity, and other diseases. However, such views disregard the fact that meat plays a critical role in maintaining human health. Although the importance of meat and meat products in human diets has been discussed and appealed extensively in scientific articles, efforts to educate and inform consumers on meat ingestion might be still insufficient in many countries (Ansorena & Astiasarán 2007; Arihara 2006a,b, 2014; Arihara & Ohata 2008, 2011a; Fernández-Ginés et al. 2005; Jiménez-Colmenero 2007; Lawrie & Ledward 2006; Schmid 2010).
