Meat and meat products are a good source of bioactive compounds with positive effect on human health such as vitamins, minerals, peptides or fatty acids. Growing food consumer awareness and intensified global meat producers competition puts pressure on creating new healthier meat products. In order to meet these expectations, producers use supplements with functional properties for animal diet and as direct additives for meat products. In the presented work seven groups of key functional constituents were chosen: (i) fatty acids; (ii) minerals; (iii) vitamins; (iv) plant antioxidants; (v) dietary fibers; (vi) probiotics and (vii) bioactive peptides. Each of them is discussed in term of their impact on human health as well as some quality attributes of the final products.
Keywords: additives; bioactive compounds; fortification; functional food; meat.