Abstract: With the rapid progress of processing technology and the change of our lifestyle, a wide variety of processed meat products have been more and more popular with consumers. However, the physicochemical properties and nutritional components of processed meat and its safety for consumption are susceptible to processing and storage conditions, leading to protein oxidation and frozen denaturation, lipid oxidation, postmortem metabolism, breeding of pathogenic bacteria and carcinogen formation. Protein oxidation, defined as a covalent modification, is one of the most significant changes in meat products, and it causes damages to the protein structure such as the modification of amino acid side chains, polypeptide chain rupture and protein cross-linking, thereby changing the gel properties, water-holding capacity, digestibility and nutritional quality of meat products. This paper reviews the current progress in the study of protein oxidation in meat with respect to protein oxidation mechanism, the evaluation indicators and the influencing factors.

Key words: meat, protein oxidation, free radical, cross-linking, eating quality