The salami of Calabria: fatty acids profile and nutritional properties

The processing industry salami is of particular economic importance in Calabria (Italy). In this work we have decided to use pork meat breed "native", ie the black pig Apulian-Calabrese for the production of salami namely “salame calabrese”. The pig used for this meat products bred in semi-wild state and is fed mostly with residues of vegetables such as eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers and beans etc. The two above characteristics contribute to the production of meat with singular nutritional characteristics. For the production of this salami, have been selected and used pig anatomical parts of great value and very lean, in the respective percentages: 45% ham, 35% shoulder and 20% of rib. For the production of “salame calabrese”, a chili sauce was also added to help preservation of salami during shelf-life. This sauce exert strong antioxidant properties, which emerged from a variety of in vitro tests (ABTS, FRAP, βcarotene, DPPH) due their high level in total phenols content. The mixture of meat and chili sauce was bagged at temperature of 0 °C in synthetic casings of collagen. During the stages of salami maturation several parameters such as pH, aw, and fatty acids profile were monitored. The nutritional profile showed very important features: high protein and low lipid values obtained were compared with the values of other salami produced in Italy. The most significant result focused on the lipid profile of salami, analyzed by Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) method in two stages (0 and 4 months). The analysis showed that the salami has an oleic acid content of 47.8 and 48.4% at t=0 and t= 4 months, respectively. Generally during the period of shelf-life the concentration of unsaturated fatty acids was higher than saturated fatty acids. For the above mentioned reason we believe that this salami characterized by high level of PUFA–ω3 fatty acids could be preferred.