Consumers evaluate the acceptance of food products on the basis of a number of characteristics, such as sensory properties, nutritional value or impact on health .
Meat has varied commercial value due to the perceptual attributes that consumers expect to be present. The most important are tenderness, juiciness, and flavor.
Tenderness has been linked to several factors, such as the animal's age, sex or the muscle location. One important way to tenderize meat is by aging.
Flavour, juiciness and tenderness contribute to the consumer’s perception of meat palatability or satisfaction derived from consuming beef. Beef quality and its sensory characteristics are influenced by a number of factors including breed, diet, growth intensity, gender, pH value, marbling, ageing of meat etc.
All meat products have at least one observable quality indicator that can be measured before distribution, allowing reliable evaluations. Commonly occurring indicators are color and surface texture, while marbling and morphological features are also important.
Another quality factor is smell. The product should have a normal smell. This will be different for each of the species, but should vary only slightly within the species.
Traditionally, sensory/quality attributes are inspected by well-trained assessors. In some abattoirs, tenderness is evaluated using a “finger method.” Meat color and marbling evaluation methods are similar and are usually carried out by comparing ribeye muscle color or the proportion of intramuscular fat within it against reference standards specific for each of the meat species.
Fresh meat quality can be defined instrumentally by scientific factors including composition, nutrients, colour, water-holding capacity, tenderness, functionality, flavours, spoilage, contamination, etc.
Quality
characteristics of beef meat
