different authors, the incorporation of proteins in meat systems causes
an increase in firmness. Thus, Bloukas and Paneras (1993), and Youssef
and Barbut (2009, 2011) reported that hardness increased positively in
correlationwith protein content in different meat products such as lowfat
frankfurters, and meat batters formulated with meat protein and
soy, or whey proteins. They explained this behavior considering that
an increase in the protein content resulted in denser protein matrices
and consequently, in more rigid structures (Youssef & Barbut, 2011).
Besides, in a previous work using only inulin as fat replacer, Mendoza
et al. (2001) observed a reduction of hardness but they could not obtain
the texture of a full fat product, since the sausageswere harder than the
full fat samples (P b 0.05).