Italian charcuterie products are also a healthy food in line with the most modern nutritional trends, thanks to the changes introduced in the pig breeding techniques and processing methods for the purpose of obtaining lighter charcuterie products yet maintaining their organoleptic features unaltered.

According to a recent study work carried out by the I.N.R.A.N. (National Research Institute for Food and Nutrition, previously called I.N.N.), the main Italian charcuterie products turned out to be lighter and more in line with today’s nutritional requirements. In fact, paralleling the increased percentage of noble proteins, vitamins and minerals these products contain less fat than when compared to a few years ago. And, if it is true that fat must be consumed in moderate quantities, they must not be totally eliminated because they carry out important functions for our body. For example, fat enables us to assimilate liposoluble vitamins that dissolve only in the presence of fat.

Let’s analyse the nutritional features of Italian charcuterie products in detail:

Pork and, consequently, charcuterie products supply good quality proteins with a high biological value. These “bricks”, which are indispensable for the human body’s construction and its maintenance in good functional form, are defined “noble” because they are made up of fundamental elements, essential amino-acids, that the body cannot synthesize on its own and must, therefore, receive through the daily diet.

Iron and zinc are abundant in Italian charcuterie products. Iron is an important element for the prevention of anaemia; zinc favours the healing of scars and good functionality of the liver. Also present are vitamin B1 (a deficiency can cause disorders to the nervous and digestive systems) and B2 (that favours the regeneration of tissues and general well-being).

The presence of fat has drastically diminished and, overall, the average fat in charcuterie products has decreased by 30%, with even higher decreased percentages for ham that has halved its fat percentage with respect to the past: dry-cured ham contains 12% and cooked ham 15%. By eliminating the crown fat, these percentages even decrease to below 5%.
The change in the fat qualitative level is equally important. Indeed, the ratio between saturated fatty acids (that must be consumed in small quantities because they tend to encourage the onset of arteriosclerosis ) and polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids (the so-called “good” ones because they exercise a positive action on the body and are present, for example, in olive oil) is more favourable to the latter. In fact, on average the fatty acids have decreased to 34%, whereas polyunsaturated ones have risen to 15-20% and monounsaturated ones to 45-50%.

According to another prejudice, charcuterie products are particularly high in cholesterol. This is not true: average values range around 80 mg per 100 grams of product, with mortadella having 70 mg and cooked ham and würstel having 62 mg. These values are perfectly in line with other animal foods (chicken, beef, some fish such as sole).
The reduction of cholesterol in pork and, consequently, in charcuterie products is the results of controls and operations that human beings have carried out on the pig feeding (exclusively vegetarian, hence, poor in cholesterol) and breeding methods.