Toughness in Santa Inês lamb meat has negative impact on consumer evaluation

• Autor(a) principal: OLIVEIRA,Giuliana Micai de
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: ROCHA,Yana Jorge Polizer, GALLO,Sarita Bonagurio, TRINDADE,Marco Antônio, SOUZA,Giancarlo de Moura, DELGADO,Eduardo Francisquine
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Saúde e Produção Animal
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1519-99402019000100810
• topic: Acceptance; Sarcomere length; Shear force; Tenderness

SUMMARY Meat tenderness is a major attribute for consumers worldwide. However, few studies investigate the importance of lamb meat tenderness for Brazilian consumers. This study assessed consumers’ evaluation of lamb meat with high shear forces. Eight lambs were slaughtered at 32.5±2.5kg of live weight and 5 to 6 months of age. The Longissimus dorsi muscle from both half carcasses was randomly assigned to four different postmortem processes: Tough Meat (TM), obtained by cold shortening, Fresh Meat (FM), Aging for 3 (A3) and 7 (A7) days postmortem . The variables measured were the sarcomere length, shear force (WBSF) and myofibrillar fragmentation index. We also applied the sensory analysis using affective acceptance tests with hedonic scale of nine points to measure texture, juiciness and overall quality of the meat. The postmortem processing for TM resulted in shorter sarcomere and greater shear values (p <0.05) compared to all other samples, while FM, A3 and A7, did not differ between the samples. Myofibrillar fragmentation was greater for A7 compared to TM (p <0.05), while FM and A3 showed intermediate values that did not differ between the treatments. In the sensory analysis, TM samples received significantly lower scores (p <0.01) for all attributes compared to other treatments and the attributes were not different between the post rigor processes. Consumers identified and evaluated negatively the meat samples with high WBSF. However, further studies are needed to elucidate the impact of smaller differences in WBSF, at intermediate values, on consumers’ evaluation.