Question

1. Explain why processed meats labeled as “Uncured” are actually cured in terms of chemical composition and typical characteristics of cured meat products

2. The crushing of crisp or crunchy foods results in fracture and fragmentation, it appears that fracture and sound emission are associated. Attenburrow et al. (1992) reported that the sounds emitted during the crushing of a dry product are due to a sudden release of stored elastic energy. The association between mechanical fracture and sound emission has been further elaborated other food scientists. Use an example to explain how to apply acoustic properties to check the food quality

Answer 1

1) Actually uncured meat is a misnomer. Just the process is different from cured meat. The chemical composition is exactly same as that of cured meat.

The so called uncured meat also contain harmful nitrates and nitrites.

Only difference is that in so called uncured meat, nitrite is from celery or beet or some other fruit or vegetable high in nitrate that is easily converted to nitrite.

Where as in cured meat nitrate is from man made sodium nitrite.

But the nitrite molecule is the same. No matter its source.

2) Acoustic properties of food is used to measure numerically important attributes as crunchiness, elasticity, water activity, crispness etc.

Physical characters and many quality parameters canbe measured by this non destructive method to assess internal quality.

This is used in food and agriculture industry.

Example:

Food to be tested is placed on a base under, compression device with attached mechanical stress and strain measurement and finally to PC.

An acoustic emission sensor is placed near the food product. It will be connected to preamplifier, filter and amplifier and finally to the PC.

PC assess mechanical values and acoustic values based on pre fed standard values.

Then it will produce an output of quality for each parameters set.