Shannon Glisan, Ph.D., is the Research and Development Manager at Smithfield Foods, where she leads projects in bacon, marinated fresh pork, and prepared foods. She graduated from Penn State University with a Ph.D. in food science.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly shifted consumer demand away from restaurants and foodservice to home meals and ready-to-eat (RTE) meat and poultry products. As a complement for more convenience-type items, consumers began focusing on product expiration dates to limit trips to retail markets. Combined with consumers' nutritional focus on sugar, sodium, fat content, and additives, meeting these expectations and requirements is a serious challenge for meat and poultry processors. The most common challenges for reformulation are reduction of sodium and replacing additives such as nitrite and preservatives.
