Honey heads off Meat's 'Warmed Over' Flavor, Boosts Shelf Life

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HONEY HEADS OFF MEAT'S 'WARMED OVER' FLAVOR, BOOSTS SHELF LIFE
A powerful antioxidant as ingredient, not just coating, of poultry products

LAS VEGAS, Sept.8 -- Honey has been used to cure meat for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In modern times, food chemist Paul Dawson and his group at Clemson University in South Carolina are discovering this natural preservative also confers excellent protection against oxidation and boosts shelf life in popular processed meats. Their research was presented here today at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

"Some products, like packaged 'deli cuts' of breast meat, are restructured and will oxidize (become rancid) over time," says Dawson. "A natural antioxidant like honey can make their shelf life longer."

Turkey, chicken and other poultry products are particularly susceptible to this degeneration because they contain higher levels of unsaturated lipids and lower levels of antioxidant, or free-radical absorbing, molecules. The sugars in honey, however, react with meat proteins during the heat of processing, Dawson says. The products of this transformation (called a Maillard or browning reaction) are known to have antioxidant properties.

The Clemson group tested three levels of honey additive against a control in processed slices of turkey-breast roll. Using head-space gas chromatography, they found that two indicators of oxidized meat -- hexanal and thiobarbituric acid -- were significantly lower in all the honeyed samples. Another technique that measures more volatile organic breakdown products, called oxidative stability index, found similar results.

Dawson says that other, preliminary experiments indicate that processing with honey also stabilizes the turkey's palatability and color, as well as inhibits microbial growth. And as for tastiness itself, he adds, all the levels were rated as equally acceptable as controls in consumer-acceptability surveys.

The interior of intact meat, such as a whole ham, is essentially sterile. Thus the curing action of honey is centered largely on the outside, where its sugars bind with water in the meat and make this basic requirement of life unavailable for bacterial and other microbial growth.

Once the meat is sliced or ground up, however, each new surface is exposed to air and microbes -- and restructuring, or reforming, carries that back inside the meat. Soon the lipids and fatty acids begin to break down, imparting what researchers call warmed-over flavor.

After 48 hours' storage in a refrigerator, for example, Dawson found that slices of turkey breast processed without honey contained about two to three times more hexanal than samples that contained 10 percent and 15 percent honey respectively. As for thiobarbituric acid, the cooked control level of 13.0 milligrams per gram contrasted with 12.0 mg/g (5%), 7.5 mg/g (10%), and 4.8 mg/g (15%). The trend continued as long as various experiments lasted, up to about 11 weeks.

Paper AGFD 27 will be presented by Susan Mathew from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m., Mon., Sept. 8, in the Las Vegas Hilton, Hilton Center, Barron Room, Level One.

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The national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, will be held in Las Vegas, Sept. 7 - 11. This paper is among 4,500 presentations that will be made.