**1. Introduction**

Pork consumption is currently on the rise among the world's population. China, the European Union, the United States, Brazil, and Russia are the world's top five pork producers [1]. Thailand's pig production was estimated to be over 20.5 million heads in 2020, with pork consumption estimated to be around 1.3 million tons [1]. By-products, such as blood, bone, bristle, fat trimmings, viscera, and brain, are created as a result of increased pig consumption [2–4]. By-products constitute between 60% and 70% of the butchered carcass, with roughly 40% being edible and 20% being inedible [4]. Some of these by-products are widely used in many countries around the world in a variety of traditional dishes [3] and can have value effectively added using additional processes, such as thermal, chemical, centrifugation, washing, and combined processes to produce lard, flavor concentrate, plasma, red blood cell, gelatin, protein hydrolysates, and other

**Citation:** Chanted, J.; Panpipat, W.; Panya, A.; Phonsatta, N.; Cheong, L.-Z.; Chaijan, M. Compositional Features and Nutritional Value of Pig Brain: Potential and Challenges as a Sustainable Source of Nutrients. *Foods* **2021**, *10*, 2943. https:// doi.org/10.3390/foods10122943

Academic Editors: Marco Poiana, Francesco Caponio and Antonio Piga

Received: 4 November 2021 Accepted: 29 November 2021 Published: 30 November 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

products [4–7]. However, a range of factors, such as religion, culture, income, and personal taste, have an impact on the utilization of meat by-products. Depending on the country and local traditions, various meat by-products can be considered edible in certain locations but inedible in others. In reality, high-nutrient by-products such as liver, heart, blood, lung, spleen, kidney, brains, and tripe are used in the cuisines of some countries around the world [3]. Naturally, the nutritional makeup of each by-product is dependent on the animal type from which it is derived [3]. The basic composition and nutritional worth of these by-products should be assessed first, in order to find approaches to boost their value.

Although pig brain is an important by-product of slaughtering and pork processing, it has not ye<sup>t</sup> been extensively used, particularly for human consumption. There is also no academic knowledge on how to increase the value of pig brain. Only traditional cookery, such as soup, gravy, stew, curry, and fried food, has been recognized as a primary manner of using the pig brain. When using pig brain as food, not only should the issue of safety, particularly of prion diseases, be considered, but the chemical compositions and nutritive value must also be assessed in order to provide nutritional information and pave the way for improved exploitation of the pig brain [8]. As a result, the goal of this study was to determine the nutritional value and compositional features of pig brain. The findings may be valuable in boosting pig brain intake and subsequent exploitation in the sustainable meat sector in order to achieve zero waste.
