RUBBER-LIKE ELASTICITY AND MEAT TENDERNESS

This work provides an explanation of meat tenderness variations based on the rubber-like properties (pressure and elastic modulus) that endomysium and perimysium connective tissues develop above the temperature of collagen thermal contraction.
Both pressure and elastic modulus are functions of the total number of collagen cross-links per volume unit of meat sample.
The variations in pressure explain the relationships between meat tenderness and both muscle fibres diameter and muscle fibre bundles diameter and the inversion of these relationships according to meat type (beef, sheep, pork, poultry, fish). For rest length meats with no significant variations in the muscle fibres diameter, muscle fibre bundles diameter, pH, collagen fibres and collagen fibrils waviness and which are at the same ageing state, then the total number of collagen cross-links explains the variations in tenderness, observed after mild heating, and produced by muscle type, animal age, type and sex for any given species.
This theory demonstrates the decisive role of rubber-like properties of connective tissues in meat tenderness variations.

III International Symposium on Applications of Modelling as an Innovative Technology in the Agri-Food Chain; MODEL-IT

J. Lepetit

Collagen, muscle fibres, toughness, elastic modulus, pressure

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2005.674.8