Sliced meat: how does it hold together?
How
a sliced meat or meat substitute holds together is an important
textural expectation of the consumer. The binding characteristics of the
sliced product can be greatly affected by its formulation and
processing thus affecting its tensile strength.
Whilst
tensile grips or pneumatic grips are the traditional choice for tensile
testing there are alternatives for a soft and thin product such as
sliced meat. A Film Support Rig (shown in Figure 16) is
designed to hold small amounts of thin or film-like material in a drum
configuration in order to measure the biextensional properties of the
films using a puncture test.
Despite
the simplicity of penetration tests when faced with a non-homogeneous
product, penetration is highly compromised as a smaller surface area for
measurement is also more sensitive to variations in sample structure
and low reproducibility and misleading data is obtained.
Results
may show a wide variance between maximum and minimum forces depending
on whether the probe meets with, for example, internal structure
variation such as is usually present in meat products.
Paté & Pastes: Measuring Paté Firmness
More
and more often paté is being eaten as a snack spread onto toast, bread
or crackers. It is usually made by pre-cooking liver and other meats,
mixing them with other ingredients, seasoning and then filling into
moulds or casings.
There
are many variations as a result of using different ingredients and
nowadays low fat paté is also an option. There are of course vegetarian
alternatives which, more often than not, contain vegetables rather than a
meat substitute.
Chicken Tenderness: Multiple Shearing
Empirical methods of assessing texture are often challenged by lack of homogeneity or uniformity in samples.
Heterogeneous
systems, such as unprocessed meat products can have structural elements
that can vary considerably for the same overall chemical composition.
Sometimes the sample to be analysed may be of variable configuration or
structure from piece to piece such as for chicken strips.
Reformed Products:
Sausage Shearing using Warner-Bratzler
For the testing of circular samples, the Warner-Bratzler Blade (as shown in Figure 4)
is recommended, as it provides a larger cutting surface around the
product at the start of the test by means of its triangular notch in the
middle of the blade.
With
a slotted base insert, the knife is able to cut through the entire
sausage providing a crude method with little sample preparation which
lends itself ideally to quick quality determination. It is the most
common biting or shearing system for the assessment of meat and meat
products.
As
whole tissue, meat is a natural product that possesses inherent
variability due to many factors. As a sample for testing this can
present a common problem to assess the texture repeatably.
Processed
meats are of three general types: deli-styles (for example turkey,
bologna), that are sliced; formed meats (meat balls, meat patties,
chicken patties, chicken nuggets); and sausage-style meats, which are
usually tubular shaped. Processed meats are often investigated to
assess, for instance, ideal combinations of ingredients, evaluate
contribution of processing methods/times and highlight quality
inconsistencies.
A health or environmental choice?
Across
the country, people are choosing to eat less meat for the health of
their bodies and the planet, whether for one meatless day per week or a
lifetime.
The
‘fake meat’ business has been around for decades, but it has not quite
taken off due to price or down to visual, textural or flavour failure.
However, the meat-fakers say they are on the verge of a breakthrough,
that there is a real possibility that a new era of fake meat –
nutritious, cheap and indistinguishable from the real thing, made either
of synthesised animal tissue or derived from plant material – may be
upon us.
Human hair and skin become soiled due to its contact with the surrounding environment and from the sebum secreted by the scalp.
The soiling of hair and skin causes it to have a dirty feel and an unattractive appearance. Shampooing cleans the hair by removing excess soil and sebum. However, shampooing can leave the hair in a wet, tangled, and generally unmanageable state. Once the hair dries, it is often left in a dry, rough, lustreless, or frizzy condition due to removal of the hair's natural oils.
