Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-11T20:37:22.975Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Meat Structure and Quality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2017

Peter Purslow
Peter Purslow*
Affiliation:
Meat Science Area, Department of Dairy and Food Science, Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmark
Get access

Extract

This abstract is built from the work of many members of our research group in Copenhagen. The names in brackets indicate the main people involved in each element of the reported results

For most common meats, the most important aspects of eating quality that determine overall acceptability are taste (flavour), texture (especially toughness/tenderness) and juiciness (water-holding). Unexplained variations in tenderness and water-holding are two of the consistent problems in the industry and sources of consumer dissatisfaction. A basic understanding of the causes of variability in toughness and water-holding is therefore important to the meat industry, because an understanding of the mechanisms controlling these aspects of eating and processing quality is desirable if we are to reduce undesirable variations and ensure high acceptability. Despite considerable research in the last century, we have met with only partial success in explaining the causes of such variations. This warns us that the complete picture is multivariate and complex. Toughness and water-holding are in fact both properties determined at several levels of structure within muscle tissue, from the molecular, through to macroscopic. Our current programme of research contains several related areas of work which aim to further our understanding of the structural mechanisms at several levels of organisation which cause variations in tenderness and water-holding of whole meat.

Type
Invited Theatre Presentations
Information
Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science , Volume 2001 , 2001 , pp. 247 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © The British Society of Animal Science 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Christensen, M., Henckel, P. and Purslow, P.P. (2000) Does postmortem proteolysis depend on fibre type distribution? Proc. 46th ICoMST (Buenos Aires, 2000). pp 472–473.Google Scholar
Kristensen, L. and Purslow, P. (2001) The effect of ageing on the water-holding capacity of pork: role of cytoskeletal proteins. Meat Sci 58, 17–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morrison, E.H., Mielche, M.M. and Purslow, P.P. (1998) Immunolocalisation of intermediate filament proteins in porcine meat. Fibre type and muscle-specific variations during conditioning. Meat Science, 50, 91–104.Google Scholar
Offer, G and Knight, P (1988). The structural basis of water-holding in meat. Part 2. Drip losses. In Developments in meat science-vol.4 (Ed. Lawrie, R.) Elsevier Aplied Science, London, pp173–243.Google Scholar
Purslow, P.P., Ertbjerg, P., Lawson, M.A., Morrison, E.H. and Fischer, A-L. (2000). Drip contains significant levels of proteolytic enzymes. Proc. 46th ICoMST (Buenos Aires, 2000). pp 466–467.Google Scholar
Schäfer, A., Knight, P.J., Wess, T.J., Purslow, P.P. (2000) Influence of sarcomere length on the reduction of myofilament lattice spacing post-mortem and its implication on drip loss Proc. 46th ICoMST (Buenos Aires, 2000). pp 434–435.Google Scholar
Støier, S, Aaslyng, MD, EV, Olsen and Henckel, P (2001) The effect of stress during lairage and stunning on metabolism and drip loss in Dansh pork. Meat Sci., in press.Google Scholar
Taylor, RG, Geesink, GH, Thompson, VF, Koohmaraie, M and Goll, DE (1995) Is Z-disk degradation responsible for postmortem tenderization? J. Anim. Sci. 73, 1351–1367.Google Scholar
Wheeler, TL, Shackelford, SD and Koohmaraie, M (2000) Variation in proteolysis, sarcomere length, collagen content and tenderness among major pork muscles. J. Anim.. Sci. 78, 958–965.Google Scholar