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Conference abstract, 2004

Lipid oxidation in long term stored reindeer meat

Crochet, Marie-Amelie; Wiklund, Eva; Sampels, Sabine; Pickova, Jana

Abstract

Especially polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are sensitive to heat, light and air exposure. The process of oxidation is a radical chain-reaction, which will continue once it has been initiated. Therefore long time storage off meat can lead to increased lipid oxidation and thereby to flavour deterioration and off taste in the meat products. Earlier results have shown that traditional hot smoking of reindeer meat leads to low amounts of oxidation products measured as thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), while rather high concentrations of TBARS were measured in dried meat [Sampels, 2004 #553]. In the present study the effect of long time storage (14month) on the same products were evaluated. After processing a samples were taken and stored in –80 °C. The remaining fresh and smoked samples were stored in –20 °C, while dried samples were vacuum packed and stored in 4 °C for 60 days and after that moved to –20 °C. After 14month all samples were moved to – 80 °C (stored samples). Due to a change of the analytical procedure from a method using HPLC to a spectophotometric method all samples were reanalysed. The TBARS were extracted from the meat with a solution of trichloric-acid and after reaction with thiobarbituric acid (TBA) measured at the wavelength of 530nm. In general the values of were much lower then detected with the HPLC method. Especially the difference in oxidation products between the fresh and the dried samples was much lower in the present study compared with [Sampels, 2004 #553]. The smoked samples had significantly lowest values while the dried samples showed significantly increased values of TBARS compared to both fresh and dried. The stored samples showed different results depending on the way of processing. In the fresh samples the TBARS values were significantly increased after storage, while no difference could be found in the smoked samples. In the dried meat the TBARS values after the long-term storage where lower than in the samples directly frozen in – 80 °C. These differences could depend on several factors. As the dried meat has shown to be much more oxidized then the fresh meat. The low amount of oxidation products after storage in the dried meat suggests that the main compound reacting with the TBA, malondialdehyde (MDA), which is a volatile compound evaporated from the dried meat. MDA is soluble in water, but as the dried meat has a significantly higher dry matter than the fresh and smoked meat, MDA might evaporate easier from the dried meat. Additive analyses as for example sensory analyses of the meat and/or continued headspace analyses during storage should be done to verify this. Nitrite used during the smoking process might have had an adverse effect to the analyses by spectrophotometer, and thereby cause the low concentrations of TBARS even if we could not clarify these effects in the HPLC analyses. Further research should be done to clarify the differences between the two methods and especially the influence of nitrite

Published in

Proceedings of 13th NOR meeting
2004,
Publisher: Nordic council for reindeer husbandry research (NOR)

Conference

NORs 13. nordiske forskningskonferanse om rein og reindrift