The sensory experience and characteristics of a product play a crucial role in determining food choice, consumption, and whether consumers will become repeat buyers. If a food item possesses an unpleasant smell, unappealing appearance, or distasteful flavor, it is likely to be rejected by consumers.
For centuries, this type of analysis has been utilized to accept or reject food products. Historically, it has been considered a complementary methodology to assess food quality in conjunction with technological and microbiological safety evaluations.
One advantage of sensory evaluation is its ability to directly quantify how people perceive various attributes of meat. It can also uncover individual preferences. However, this approach does have certain drawbacks, including being time-consuming, expensive, and subject to significant variation between different individuals and even within the same person. Additionally, human judgments can be influenced by irrelevant factors. Three major attributes contributing to the sensory perception of meat quality are tenderness (or texture), juiciness, and flavor.
Meat tenderness is a complex characteristic influenced by several structural and metabolic factors, such as connective tissue concentration, final pH, muscle contraction during rigor mortis, and, notably, the activity of proteolytic enzymes, calpains, and cathepsins.
Recognized as the most critical quality trait for consumer acceptability of fresh meat, meat tenderness strongly influences consumer satisfaction and, in turn, repeat purchases.
Meat juiciness is typically evaluated through sensory assessment, and its definition may vary among studies. It can refer to the overall perception of moisture in the mouth during chewing (referred to as sustained juiciness), where saliva formation might play a role. Alternatively, juiciness can describe the amount of moisture released from the food after the initial few chews.
Regarding meat flavor from a sensory perspective, it involves the aroma perceived through the olfactory senses before consumption, the flavor aroma sensed during chewing, and the basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty detected by taste receptors on the tongue.
Sensory study in meat
