Nutritional evaluation of the lipid fraction of feral wild boar (Sus scrofa scrofa) meat

Consumer increasing demand for wild boar meat and scarceness of data on its lipid fraction justified this study. The psoas major muscle collected from 25 feral wild boars was used to quantify the total lipid, total cholesterol, fatty acid (FA) profile, and vitamin E homologues.Intramuscular fat and total cholesterol contents averaged 4.64 g/100 g of meat and 56.9 mg/100 g of meat, respectively. No differences were found in FA composition between groups, except for 20:5n−3 that was higher in youngsters. All groups presented small concentrations of rumenic acid in meat (CLA; 0.24% of total FA). FA profile showed considerable resemblance with pork, while the vitamin E profile is marked by high concentrations of both alpha- (17.4 ± 3.3 μg/g meat) and gamma-tocopherols (2.6 ± 1.3 μg/g meat) and by the presence of other vitamin E homologues not previously reported in wild boar meat.

► The study used feral wild boar from Montado. ► Together Montado and Dehesa representthe major ecosystem of the Iberian Peninsule. ► The study provides the characterization of wild boar meat lipid fraction. ► The wild boar CLA content is above CLA values determined in pork. ► It was possible to identify and quantify 7 vitamin E isoforms in a total of 8.