Performances and apparent digestibility of growing pigs fed diets with different fat sources and supplemented with organic red wine solids.

Nutritional guidelines for consumer health suggest increasing the polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) content of meat, through animal feed. However the replacement of saturated fatty acids (SFA) with PUFA creates problems of conservation of the meat, due to its susceptibility to lipid peroxidation. This problem can however be overcome by supplementing the animal diet with natural substances that have an antioxidant action. In this study we have evaluated the effect of diets containing two vegetable oils with different fatty acid profiles and the supplementation of red wine solids (RWS) by using an alcohol-free phytocomplex (LiofenolTM) obtained from freeze-dried organic red wine on the digestibility of diets and on the performance of growing pigs. Three pig diets were formulated: a diet rich in SFA (palm oil-based); a diet rich in PUFA (corn oil-based); and a diet rich in PUFA (corn oil-based) but supplemented with RWS. Results indicate that the studied diets can be used for feeding pigs without a decrease in the digestibility of nutrients or the reduction of animal growth performance, thus representing the starting point for further studies on food quality.