Elsevier

Food Control

Volume 120, February 2021, 107491
Food Control

Correlations between the levels of the bioactive compounds and quality traits in beef loin and round during cold storage

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2020.107491Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Beef loin had higher oleic acid levels than round.

  • Beef round contained more bioactive compounds than beef loin.

  • During storage, beef quality decreased with an increase in aerobic plate counts.

  • Carnosine, anserine, and creatinine in beef were highly correlated with quality.

  • Antioxidant activities of beef positively correlated with carnosine and anserine.

Abstract

In this study we investigated the meat quality characteristics, bioactive compound content, and antioxidant activities during cold storage (at 4 °C) of beef loin (n = 70) and round (n = 42) for 19 days. Subsequently, we estimated the correlation between the levels of the bioactive compounds and the quality traits. The beef quality degraded with time, with an increase in aerobic plate counts (APC) and reduction in redness (a*) and sensory properties. The results revealed distinctive features of the two cuts that significantly differed for their proximate compositions in addition to other quality parameters. The quality traits, including the sensory properties, were observed to be altered during storage. Moreover, the levels of bioactive compounds, including CoQ10, l-carnitine, carnosine, anserine, creatine, and creatinine, were higher in the beef round than in the loin, and their levels were found to be influenced by the storage conditions. During storage, contents of carnosine and anserine in loin and round were shown to be positively correlated with tenderness, a*, yellowness (b*), and sensory characteristics (0.614 ≤ r ≤ 0.909) and negatively correlated with APC (−0.541 ≤ r ≤ −0.758). However, creatinine levels in loin and round increased during storage and showed a negative correlation with tenderness, a*, b*, and sensory characteristics (−0.596 ≤ r ≤ −0.969) and a positive correlated with APC (0.540 ≤ r ≤ 0.887). The antioxidant activities of loin and round were positively correlated with carnosine and anserine (0.572 ≤ r ≤ 0.931). This study provides novel insights into the correlation between beef quality traits and bioactive compounds in two beef muscles during cold storage and could be used for the evaluation of beef meat quality.

Introduction

Meat quality can be defined by a set of parameters, including the sensory properties, safety, and nutritional qualities, and these influence consumer preference. Beef is a good source of high-quality protein, bioavailable haem iron, and numerous bioactive compounds that benefit human health by preventing disease development, promoting proper body functioning, etc. (Purchas, Rutherfurd, Pearce, Vather, & Wilkinson, 2004). It contains a large number of bioactive compounds with antioxidant properties, such as coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), l-carnitine, creatine, creatinine, carnosine, and anserine. CoQ10, a fat-soluble vitamin-like benzoquinone derivative that acts as a carrier in the mitochondrial electron transfer process of cellular respiration and energy production (Purchas et al., 2004), is a potent antioxidant that inhibits the oxidation of lipids and proteins via quenching the free radicals in humans (Kathuria, Gautam, Sharma, & Sharma, 2019). l-carnitine plays an important role in energy metabolism and is involved in the transport of long-chain fatty acids to the mitochondrial matrix (Fan, Kim, & Han, 2009). Additionally, supplementation of l-carnitine improves the learning capacity of and age-dependent memory decline in Alzheimer's patients (Kathuria et al., 2019). Creatine and its phosphate form (creatinine) are also involved in energy metabolism and are believed to enhance muscle performance (Purchas et al., 2004), and creatine can also neutralize free radicals and other reactive oxygen species in both in vivo and in vitro models (Lawler, Barnes, Wu, Song, & Demaree, 2002). Carnosine and anserine are histidyl dipeptides found in skeletal muscle and other tissues (Purchas et al., 2004). Carnosine acts as a natural scavenger of low-molecular-weight aldehydes produced by degradative oxidation of sugars, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and proteins (Guiotto, Calderan, Ruzza, & Borin, 2005).

High antioxidant levels not only increase the preservation life of meat but also improve consumer health (Falowo, Fayemi, & Muchenje, 2014). However, the levels and activity of the bioactive compounds in meat and the meat quality could be altered during their processing, aging, distribution, and storage. Additionally, the packaging (McMillin, 2017) and refrigerated storage of beef in aerobic conditions (Pellissery, Vinayamohan, Amalaradjou, & Venkitanarayanan, 2020) are the other factors that influence its quality (Kim et al., 2018). Moreover, during storage, proteins and nucleic acids in meat are broken down into smaller molecular units, including free amino acids, peptides, nitrogen compounds, and glucose, and are associated with the off-flavor of the meat (Frank et al., 2016, 2020). The negative quality changes in beef during storage potentially influence the content and properties of the bioactive compounds. Although, several studies have extensively reported the changes in meat quality traits and the levels of various bioactive compounds along with their activity during storage (Clifford, 1992; Kim et al., 2016; Frank et al., 2019, 2020), their interrelationships have not been fully explored. Furthermore, it is important to characterize different beef cuts during storage, as the types of muscle fibers and physicochemical compositions of different beef cuts vary with sex, age, diet, amount of exercise, muscle location, etc. (Jung, Hwang, & Joo, 2016).

Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the changes in meat quality traits, bioactive compounds, and the antioxidant properties of beef loin and round during 19-day cold storage and investigated the correlation of bioactive compound levels with meat quality and antioxidant activity.

Section snippets

Sample preparation and storage conditions

Beef loin (M. Longissimus dorsi) and round (M. Semimembranosus) cuts with quality grade 1+ (Hanwoo, >30 months old, carcass weight averaging 342 ± 50 kg) were obtained from a local meat shop in Korea 24 h postmortem and sliced into 1.5 cm thick pieces. Each piece (70 and 42 samples for loin and round, respectively) was placed on a polystyrene tray and wrapped into low-density polyethylene (LDPE) film (oxygen transmission rate = 35,273 cm−3 m−2 day−1 at p (O2) = 1 atm) under aerobic conditions.

Proximate compositions

The proximate compositions of beef loin and round samples are listed in Table 1. As observed, the loin (M. Longissimus dorsi) and round (M. Semimembranosus) cuts, which are considered the major muscles in beef, showed very different characteristics. Accordingly, an earlier study has shown that the fat deposition easily occurred in the loin and tender, while the round hardly displayed fat deposition and was tough owing to differences in the number, types, and area of muscle fibers (Hwang, Kim,

Conclusions

Here we characterized the beef cuts, the loin and round for their proximate composition, levels of different quality parameters, sensory properties, levels of endogenous bioactive compounds, and their antioxidant activities (DPPH, ABTS, and FRAP) and reported the influence of storage duration on these parameters. The results showed distinctive characteristics of the two cuts—beef loin has a higher fat content, oleic acid composition, and tenderness than round. On the contrary, beef round was

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hye-Jin Kim: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Aera Jang: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Hanwoo Board in Korea. It was also supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2020-2018-0-01433) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion) and Brain Korea 21 plus project (Human Resource Development for Next Generation Animal Life Industry with ICT-Big Data) from the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development in

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