The study of amino acid composition and oxidation processes in meat of Aberdeen-Angus bull-calves in chilled and supercooled state

Improving the safety and quality of meat raw materials from animals of special-purpose beef cattle helps to meet the demand for foods at high nutritional value. In the Russian Federation, the Aberdeen-Angus breed is one of the leading beef cattle, from which high quality marbled beef is obtained. Investigations have been carried out to study the qualitative indices of beef from this breed at storage under temperature conditions of cooling medium of 1 ± 0.5 ° C and minus 2.5 ± 0.5 ° C in cold chambers during 12 and 24 days. A decrease in the content of free amino acids in meat during storage was noted. It was found that after 24 days of storage, the biological value of the product (ratio of essential amino acids to nonessential ones) at minus 2.5±0.5 ° C was 1.14 times higher as compared with storage at 1.0±0.5 ° C temperature. After 12 days of storage at 1.0±0.5 ° C temperature, the values of acid and peroxide numbers increased about 3 times in comparison with the initial values, while at minus 2.5±0.5 ° C two times only. After 24 days of storage, the increase of acid number in chilled meat was 42% higher than in super-cooled meat; the values of the peroxide number in meat at 1.0±0.5 ° C was 1.3 times higher than in meat at minus 2.5±0.5 ° C. The researches resulted in recommendations of the temperature conditions providing the storage of super-cooled vacuum-packed meat without phase transition of water into ice as well as ensuring better preservation of biologically relevant components and nutritional value of meat.