Tag: science

Calcium and Beef?

Calcium and beef, not a combination that you hear paired together very often, but it is a very important combo!  Calcium is important in beef as it helps make the meat tender.  How does it do that you may ask?  Well let me tell you…

All muscle contains enzymes, called calpains, that breakdown protein and are activated by calcium.  These enzymes are important during life because they help remove any weak, or injured proteins in your muscles and let new, healthy protein be formed.  Think about exercising.  When you work out, your muscle fibers are injured and the protein that makes them up is damaged.  Calpains help get rid of those injured proteins and let new, healthy proteins take their place, helping your muscles gain strength.

Postmortem, when this muscle has been converted to meat, those calpains are still active.  The only difference is that meat no longer has energy available to rebuild the muscle.  Calpains are busy breaking apart the protein, without new protein being formed.  This continuous breakdown is what causes meat to be tender.  Think about eating a steak. Did your mouth just water at the thought?  If you have a whole steak and try to just take a big bite without first cutting it, it will probably be kind of tough to chew through.  Cutting the steak across the grain into bite-sized pieces makes it much more tender and easier to chew.  Calpains “cut” those fibers and break them down, leading to a more tender product.

Calcium is important because it is responsible for activating these enzymes.  Without calcium, there would be no need to age beef, because the enzymes responsible for tenderness wouldn’t be active.  The beef we consume would be much tougher than what we know it to be today.  It is so crazy to me that although beef isn’t known to be a good source of calcium in our diet, it still requires calcium to create a palatable product.

While at University of Idaho, my research has been focused on finding a method to improve beef tenderness by activating calpains earlier postmortem.  Basically, I am trying to find a way to make more calcium available to kick the enzymes into high gear!  This project has kept me busy in the lab the past few months, but it has been so fun and exciting to see the data pour in.  I am continually amazed at the amount of science that is involved in making a steak taste great, but it has been so much fun to be a part of the research!

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The Science Behind a Steak

Did you know that every food and drink item that you can buy in a grocery store has been through various forms of scientific testing?  Whether it be for pathogens, allergens, microbial growth, flavor development, ingredient use, sensory appeal, the list goes on and on, there is a lot of science that goes into the food we eat!

The same goes for the products that you can purchase at the meat counter.  Now, when I say that there is science in your steak, I don’t mean that it has been chemically altered.  I mean that there has been significant testing put into place to help improve that piece of meat to provide a great eating experience and safe product for you and your family.  One of those tests is Warner-Bratzler Shear Force (WBSF).

Although a long name, WBSF is a simple concept.  Imagine biting into a big, juicy steak and having one of these two thoughts:

 “This is so tender, it just melts in my mouth,” or “This is so tough, I feel like I’m chewing on rubber!”

Sound familiar?  These two thoughts are describing the tenderness of the steak.  WBSF is a measurement of tenderness.  To complete this test, steaks are cooked and cores (basically bite sized pieces) are removed.  The cores are then cut with a machine that measures how many kilograms of pressure it takes to cut through the piece (the force it takes to shear the core, hence the name).  This represents how much pressure you would have to use to chew through the product.  The lower the WBSF value, the more tender the steak.  Using this information, we can find different things that can improve tenderness, whether that be a production method (think the animal’s environment it is raised in or what it is fed), a processing method (how long the product was aged, how the meat was cut, etc.) or cooking method (rare vs. well-done). 

WBSF is often used alongside taste panels. It is helpful to use WBSF as it gives a definite number without being influenced by personal preference.  However, taste panels are necessary because even if a machine tells us it should taste good, it’s people who need to enjoy it.

  • Step 1: Cook the steaks to a consistent temperature.
  • Step 2: Remove cores (bite size pieces), try to get a representative group from the whole steak.
  • Step 3: Shear the core and get the final measurement of force.

For those of you who are new to The Meating Room and haven’t read my bio, I am currently pursuing my master’s degree in meat science.  Last week, our lab group spent three days running WBSF analysis.  Three days, 230 steaks, 1,400+ cores to cut, all to try to find a method to improve steak tenderness and consistency for the end consumer. 

This is just a tiny fragment of the science that goes into producing great tasting steak.  As I continue with my project, I hope to share more of the work we are doing in the lab and to give you an insight into what a “meat scientist” really does!