Heat treatment effect on fatty acid composition in different pig tissues

Linseed is one of the most useful crops that has been cultivated as a commercial plant all over the world. Recently there has been a growing interest in linseed oil due to the high concentration of linoleic and especially alpha-linolenic acid. Since animals are not able to synthesize these essential fatty acids, changes in fatty acid content in meat can be achieved through the changes in animal diet. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of diet supplemented with linseed rich additive on fatty acid profile and omega fatty acids content in pig meat. Furthermore, fatty acid composition of roasted meat of pigs fed with control and experimental diet was investigated. Twelve pigs were divided in a control and experimental group and grown to 110 kg of live weight. The experimental group was fed a standard diet enriched with 2.5% of commercial additive. Fatty acid composition of fresh meat samples and heat treated meat were determined by GC-FID. Meat was roasted in oven at the temperature of 80 - 85 deg C until the temperature in the centre reached 69 deg C (about 1 hour). STATISTICA software, version 10 was used for performing ANOVA and Fishers comparison of means. Samples from the experimental group fed with linseed enriched diet showed significantly higher (p is less than 0.01 and p = 0.01, respectively) content of both omega 3 (n-3) (8.25% vs. 1.33%) and omega-6 (n-6) fatty acids (25.68% vs. 20.68%) in all tissues, thus making it better for a human consumption from a health perspective. Heat treatment significantly decreased (p is less than 0.05) the content of stearic and linoleic acid in control tissue samples, but decrease was insignificant (p is greater than 0.05) in samples from the experimental group. In conclusion, diet enriched with linseed had a beneficial effect on the majority of monitored parameters in the study.