Abstract: Thawing is an important pretreatment step for frozen meat before its processing. Selecting appropriate thawing method is crucial to ensure the quality of defrosted meat. Since traditional thawing methods have the disadvantages of long time consumption and causing quality deterioration, new efficient thawing technologies have been rapidly developed and applied to maintain meat quality. Quality attributes such as water-holding capacity will inevitably change during thawing, due to the damage to cells caused by ice crystals during freezing, as well as protein oxidation, conformational changes, and changes in aggregation properties. This article briefly summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of new thawing technologies and the latest advances in their applications in the field of meat products. Protein oxidation, and changes in protein conformation and aggregation characteristics are explored to reveal an association between protein oxidation and water-holding capacity in meat products. This review will provide reference for the application of new low-energy-consumption and high-efficiency meat thawing technologies.

Key words: meat; thawing technology; protein oxidation; protein conformation; aggregation properties; mechanism