Citation: di Corcia, M.; Tartaglia, N.; Polito, R.; Ambrosi, A.; Messina, G.; Francavilla, V.C.; Cincione, R.I.; della Malva, A.; Ciliberti, M.G.; Sevi, A.; et al. Functional Properties of Meat in Athletes’ Performance and Recovery. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 5145. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph19095145 Academic Editors: Giuseppe Messina, Patrizia Proia and Paul B. Tchounwou Received: 13 March 2022 Accepted: 20 April 2022 Published: 23 April 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 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/). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Review Functional Properties of Meat in Athletes’ Performance and Recovery Martina di Corcia 1 , Nicola Tartaglia 2 , Rita Polito 3 , Antonio Ambrosi 2 , Gaetana Messina 4 , Vincenzo Cristian Francavilla 5 , Raffaele Ivan Cincione 3 , Antonella della Malva 1 , Maria Giovanna Ciliberti 1 , Agostino Sevi 1 , Giovanni Messina 3, * and Marzia Albenzio 1, * 1 Department of Agriculture, Food, Natural Resources and Engineering (DAFNE), University of Foggia, 71100 Foggia, Italy; martina.dicorcia@unifg.it (M.d.C.); antonella.dellamalva@unifg.it (A.d.M.); maria.ciliberti@unifg.it (M.G.C.); agostino.sevi@unifg.it (A.S.) 2 Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Foggia, 71100 Foggia, Italy; nicola.tartaglia@unifg.it (N.T.); antonio.ambrosi@unifg.it (A.A.) 3 Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Foggia, 71100 Foggia, Italy; rita.polito@unifg.it (R.P.); ivan.cincione@unifg.it (R.I.C.) 4 Department of Translational Medicine, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, 80138 Naples, Italy; gaetana.messina@unicampania.it 5 School of Engineering, Architecture, and Motor Sciences, Kore University of Enna, 94100 Enna, Italy; vincenzo.francavilla@unikore.it * Correspondence: giovanni.messina@unifg.it (G.M.); marzia.albenzio@unifg.it (M.A.); Tel.: +39-8815-88095 (G.M.); +39-0881-589327 (M.A.) Abstract: Physical activity (PA) and sport play an essential role in promoting body development and maintaining optimal health status both in the short and long term. Despite the benefits, a long-lasting heavy training can promote several detrimental physiological changes, including transitory immune system malfunction, increased inflammation, and oxidative stress, which manifest as exercise-induced muscle damages (EIMDs). Meat and derived products represent a very good source of bioactive molecules such as proteins, lipids, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. Bioactive molecules represent dietary compounds that can interact with one or more components of live tissue, resulting in a wide range of possible health consequences such as immune-modulating, antihypertensive, antimicrobial, and antioxidative activities. The health benefits of meat have been well established and have been extensively reviewed elsewhere, although a growing number of studies found a significant positive effect of meat molecules on exercise performance and recovery of muscle function. Based on the limited research, meat could be an effective post-exercise food that results in favorable muscle protein synthesis and metabolic performance. Keywords: diet; meat; physical activity (PA); health; wellbeing; muscle recovery; exercise-induced muscle damages (EIMDs) 1. Introduction Since the last decades of the previous millennium, global interest in the issue of health and the concepts of “healthy life” is growing, thus contributing to raise public awareness on the issue of prevention and promotion of “healthy habits”. Physical activity (PA) represents an excellent, practical, and low-cost method of improving health. PA has a wide range of physiological consequences on many body systems [1–7]. However, despite of the large variety of positive effects of PA, some negative physiologi- cal and biomechanics changes occur. They are responsible for the reduction of muscle strength capacity and the appearance of muscle pain, swelling, and stiffness; a symptomatology commonly attributable to exercise-induced muscle damages (EIMDs) [8,9]. Hotfiel et al. [10] postulated that the ultrastructural muscle injury following intense exercise may be due to muscle membrane damage, sarcomere disorganization, protein degradation, autophagy, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 5145. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095145 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph