There are several means of determining the tenderness of meat. Recently, a great deal of effort has been focused on connective tissue, or collagen, as a measure of tenderness. These foci have included biochemical determination of collagen types, the ratios of soluble and insoluble collagen, changes of collagen with age, and abundance of collagen.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the abundance of collage as a means of differentiating levels of tenderness , using histology. Steaks taken from the bovine tenderloin, inside round, and bottom round (eye) were observed histologically using special stains for connective tissue. This method, compared with accepted methods of measuring tenderness, showed similar trends, but its use is limited