MEAT COMPOSITION, FROM MICROSCOPY
TO CHEMISTRY BY WAY OF DIAGNOSTIC
IMAGING
S.C. Modina1, E. Trevisi2, C. Bernardi1, M. Di Giancamillo3
1Department of Health, Animal Science and Food
Safety, Universit\ue0 degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 10,
20133 Milano, Italy
2Institute of Zootechnics, Faculty of Agriculture,
Universit\ue0 Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Emilia
Parmense 84, 29122 Piacenza, Italy
3Department of Veterinary Science and Public Health,
Universit\ue0 degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 10, 20133
Milano, Italy
E-mail: [email protected]
The increasing demand of a real-time monitoring
of food products has encouraged the application
of non-invasive techniques. Computed
Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI) proved to be very accurate and
valuable tools in estimating body and carcass
composition in farm animals.1 CT has been successfully
used for the characterization of food
Italian products such as salami, providing a precise
evaluation of fat percentage, also assessing its
spatial distribution.2 Manzocco and colleagues
demonstrated that MRI has great potential in monitoring
the evolution of dry curing in S. Daniele
hams.3In our experience, helical CT proved to be a fast
tool in the classification of different meat cuts,
deriving from adult cow and destined for the
preparation of aircured products as \u201clean meat\u201d or
\u201cfat meat\u201d, both in fresh and frozen samples.
Histological studies confirmed that CT clearly
distinguishes adipose and connective tissue infiltration
within muscles and that semi-quantitative
analysis of infiltration degree can be achieved.
These data were further supported by the chemical
analysis of meat samples corresponding to the
same region of interest observed in both CT and
histologic investigations; dry matter, crude proteins,
crude fat and ash contents, calculated following
standard international methods,4 varied in
fact depending on the fat infiltrated extent,
according with CT images. We finally observed
that CT could be used in the evaluation of the
same products at the end of ripening, without
removing the outer envelope.
These results are important for beef and meat
industrial processing sector, suggesting that CT
could be employed as an on-line instrument in
abattoir and dry-cured meat industry in classifying
the products at the beginning of the manufacturing
even they are frozen. Moreover, it might represent
a rapid and non-invasive technique for quality
check at the end of the production line and for the
assignment of the most appropriate nutritional
and commercial value to different products.
References
1. Scholz AM et al. Animal. 2015; 9: 1250
2. Frisullo P et al. Journal of Food Engineering. 2009;
94: 283
3. Manzocco L et al. Food Chem. 2013;141(3):2246
4. AOAC International 2012. Official Methods of
Analysis. 19th ed. AOAC International Gaithersburg,
M
