Warming will mar quality of meat ‘Beef, Pork Will Become Soggier, Blander, Darker & P

natarajan

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Veterinary scientists have said that as the world warms, slabs of meat would lose their juiciness, and become soggier, blander, leaner, darker and more prone to spoilage.
According to a report in the New Scientist, this is all because the quality of our meat depends on whether or not animals experience heat stress during transport to the abattoir.
Cattle begin to suffer heat stress at 20 degrees Celsius, pigs at 31 degrees C. “The one thing we can be sure of is that they’ll experience those harmful temperatures more often with climate change,” said Neville Gregory of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK.
Gregory has spent over a decade studying how meat quality varies with the temperature at which farm animals are kept.
In a paper published in Food Research International, he puts his findings in the context of future climate change. “Unless farmers take protective measures, global warming will make pork soggier and paler,” said Gregory.
Normally, after an animal dies, energy reserves—in the form of glycogen—are broken down into lactic acid, causing the carcass pH to fall from 7.0 to 5.5.
But heat-stressed pork acidifies more quickly. When this happens, muscle proteins fall apart, and as a result so does the meat’s structure. “What you’re left with is meat that resembles soggy white blotting paper,” said Gregory.
Heat-stressed pork tends to be sold at a lower price than premium meat, as because it’s not what people expect on their plates.
“But in a warmer future, soggy pork chops could become standard,” Gregory said. “As for beef, it will taste blander and look darker, almost mahogany, or umber, and in the worst case, black.”
Heat-stressed cows run out of glycogen before they die, and as a result produce very little lactic acid after death. As with pork, the pH of beef drops, but because there is less lactic acid in beef than in pork, it stalls at 6.3. At this higher pH, proteins retain water, which prevents oxygen from penetrating the meat.
“This causes the meat’s pigment to default to its darker, oxygen-free state,” said Gregory. ANI
Late-night
snacks help
pack on kilos
Washington: Midnight raids on the refrigerator may have worse consequences than indigestion—a study in mice boosts the theory that when you eat affects whether the calories go to your hips or get burned off.
Mice fed during the daytime—when they normally would be sleeping—gained more weight than mice fed at night, Fred Turek of Northwestern University in Illinois and colleagues found.
They ended up weighing 7.8% more than night-fed mice. This held even though the mice were fed identical amounts of food and exercised the same amount, they said in the study. REUTERS

NORMALLY, AFTER AN ANIMAL DIES, ENERGY RESERVES—IN THE FORM OF GLYCOGEN—ARE BROKEN DOWN INTO LACTIC ACID. BUT HEAT-STRESSED PORK ACIDIFIES MORE QUICKLY. WHEN THIS HAPPENS, MUSCLE PROTEINS FALL APART, AND SO DOES THE MEAT’S STRUCTURE
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