Current Nutritional Approaches to Maintaining and Improving Broiler Meat Quality: Part 1, Diet Manipulation and Feeding Management

Global poultry meat consumption is expected to increase by about 29 million tons (20%) between 2026 and 2035, making poultry the largest contributor to global meat-consumption growth. Total global meat consumption is projected to reach approximately 412 million tons by 2035, representing a 12% increase over the base period. Commercial broiler production is characterized by fast growth and great feed efficiency, leading to increased concerns about meat quality because fast-growing breeds often exhibit poorer quality traits. The objective of the present review is to investigate the role of recent nutritional strategies, specifically diet manipulation and feeding regimes and management, in improving or maintaining the physicochemical and nutritional properties of broiler meat. A dietary crude protein reduction by −1.5% to −3.0% that is balanced with essential amino acids might maintain meat physicochemical characteristics. Dietary lipid sources (such as vegetable oils, tallow, and insect fats) with/without emulsifiers modified the fatty acid profile in meat according to the source used; pH was generally unaffected, whereas color and texture traits showed source- and dose-dependent responses, ranging from no effect (e.g., olive pomace acid oil) to altered lightness, redness, or shear force (e.g., soybean oil, rice bran oil, high-level insect fat inclusion). Furthermore, the dietary inclusion of omega-3 sources like fish oil, linseed products, and marine algae effectively enriched meat with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Dietary marine algae provided beneficial antioxidants that help in maintaining meat oxidative stability via reducing lipid peroxidation, leading to a prolonged shelf life. The addition of carbohydrases or multi-enzyme cocktails to a low-energy diet or low-density feed ingredients helped in maintaining the physical properties of broiler meat. Feed restriction programs had no negative impacts on physical meat quality parameters, but they were effective tools for mitigating breast muscle myopathies like wooden breast, white striping, and spaghetti meat. Optimizing pre-slaughter fasting to a moderate duration (8–12 h) is essential to prevent stress-induced meat quality degradation. Collectively, these findings indicate that the reviewed nutritional approaches can improve or maintain broiler meat quality; reduced dietary crude protein additionally lowers nitrogen excretion, a mechanism plausibly linked to reduced ammonia emissions and feed cost, although direct economic or environmental impact data were not evaluated in this review.