Influence Of Oxygen On The Color Of Meat

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

The benefits of eating meat are proven and many of us love to eat it. But commercially available meats can be quite misleading in some cases. It is good to know what and how it affects the color of the meat and whether the bad-looking fresh meat must be of poor quality.

In butcher shops, the meat is usually bright red, inviting and appetizing. It even looks better than meat obtained from a freshly processed animal.

The most amazing effects of oxygen are visible on the changes it causes in the color of the meat we eat. It is not an unknown fact that the market offers meats of various origins and quality. The red color of raw meat is due to the presence of myoglobin in it.

Myoglobin is a protein that is necessarily present in the muscles of living organisms and participates in oxygen-dependent processes in the body. In some types of meat, myoglobin is higher and they look redder when raw. But usually it represents about 90% of the pigments present in meat, and the remaining 10% is due to another known protein, namely hemoglobin.

Higher concentrations of oxygen give the meat its beautiful bright red appearance, which is liked by people who consume meat. While oxygen-free conditions lead to the formation of a purple color.

The sliced meat, left at room temperature, soon turns brown. This is due to the oxidation of myoglobin. In atmospheric conditions, more than 30% of the preferred red color of the meat is due to the maintenance of myoglobin oxygen - bound species. Therefore, packaged meats in the commercial network are packaged in special packages enriched with oxygen. The absence of this additional added oxygen inevitably leads to browning of the meat, which does not spoil it, but significantly impairs its good commercial appearance.

Conversely, good-looking red meat does not necessarily mean that it is fresh, it is simply subjected to appropriate processing to slow down the browning processes that are inevitable over time.

There is a known, albeit rare, but occurring effect on meat - it acquires a green hue. This coloration of the meat is due to the presence of hydrogen sulfide, which is released by the microorganism Alteromonas patrefaciens. Thanks to it, the so-called sulfmyoglobin is formed in the meat. The green color of smoked meat is due to the oxidation of pigments in meat by hydrogen peroxidase, as the enzyme naturally present in meat is destructured.

It is good to be familiar with these processes when we head to the meat shop. Often what is offered to us is not what we think we see, or at least not what we are presented with. Nevertheless, the benefits of eating meat are many and in no way should be underestimated because of one or another commercial practice.