La educación en valores en los procesos educativos actuales 24

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which makes various cuts derived from different anatomical locations to give meat with different quality characteristics (Ouali, 1990; Monin and Ouali, 1991; Klont et al., 1998; Vestergaard et al., 2000).

The bicep femoris muscle gave the highest yield which could be as a result of its high water holding capacity because yield and water holding capacity are directly related. The higher the ability of meat to retain its water during force application, the higher the yield of such meat.

Sales and Horbańczuk (1998) reported that the total amount of saleable meat are influenced by its water holding capacity. Also, the fact that bicep femoris muscle absorbed much oil during meat floss preparation might have added to its weight. However , a collolary trend was observed in the meat yield from the semi tendinous because it had the least ability to hold on to its water during cooking resulting in high cooking loss and also absorbed the least oil during meat floss preparation.

The variation noticed in the chemical composition of the product could be attributed to the differences in the chemical composition in their respective raw meat form because the same treatment was allotted to them. It would have been expected that meat floss from semitendinosus should contain less nutrient compared to other meat floss because of its high cooking loss. It is assumed that most of the nutrients contained in meat with a high cooking loss would have been leached out during cooking but the reverse is noticed in this study. The high nutrient composition profile noticed in semi tendinosus could be as a result of coagulation of nutrients during cooking which will result in increase protein and fat contents of the meat. The result of the nutrient composition agrees with the report of Hodgson et al. (1991) that samples with high moisture content are likely to have higher percentages of protein and lower percentage of intramuscular fat and were likely to shrink much during cooking than samples with high intramuscular fat. Although no significant differences was noticed among the muscles in relation to crude protein, but numerically the protein content of semi membranosus muscle was lower and it had lower percentages of cooking loss and shrinkage compared to other muscles.

The aroma of the products were scored low (all the values obtained were below intermediate value of 5) probably due to the presence of garlic that was perceived by the panelists because garlic contains vanilloids which is responsible for its pungent smell. As reported by Korczak et al. (2004), natural compounds such as spices/herbs used in food preparation, for preventing oxidation, may modify the nutritive value of food.

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The meat floss from semi membranosus muscles was scored the least in aroma probably due to its low intramuscular fat content compared to bicep femoris and semi tendinous (de Almeida et al., 2006). The meat floss from semi tendinous was rated high in flavour, tenderness and juiciness probably due to its high intramuscular fat content because it is known that intramuscular fat may positively influence some organoleptic properties of meat such as tenderness, juiciness, flavour, etc. (Savell and Cross, 1988 quoted in Fiems et al., 2000; Renand et al., 2001). Although it would have been expected that the meat floss from the bicep femoris will be rated high in juiciness because of its high water holding capacity which is also a function of juiciness (Sales and Horbańczuk,1998), but juiciness of meat does not only depend on its water holding capacity but also on the lipid content of the food.

Meat floss from bicep femoris and semitendinonus were rated the least in tenderness. The low tenderness observed in meat floss from bicep femoris could be as a result of its high connective tissue. The connective tissue is a major contributor to the toughness of the meat. Honikel (1992) reported that muscles rich in connective tissue like biceps femoris are less tender than muscles containing less connective tissue. Despite the variability in the eating qualities of the products, all the meat floss were accepted to the panelists.

Generally, it was observed that the TBARS values increased as the period of storage increased.

This agrees with the report of Pettersen et al. (2004) that TBARS increased during storage but the rate at which it occurred was low most probably due to the presence of antioxidants in some of the spices used. Reports have shown that reduction or inhibition of oxidative changes in lipids of meat and meat products may be the effect of the addition of antioxidants (Decker and Xu, 1998).

The results from this study revealed that microbial load of all products increased until the 14^th day of storage before they decreased. This might be as a result of the anti microbial agents present in some of the spices used. Again this trend followed the microbial growth rate curve, which showed that microbes will increase until when the nutrient contents declined. It implies that most probably as at the 14^th day of storage, the nutrient contained in each of the products to support active microbial growth have declined and the microbes started to die.

The high microbial load of meat floss from bicep femoris could be attributed to its high moisture and crude protein contents as compared to meat floss from semi membranosus. Also, it is a

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muscle that is made up of red fibres, and red fibre muscles are susceptible to microbial spoilage compared to white fibres muscles (Florek et al., 2007).

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6.0 Qualitative Differences and Similarities of meat floss prepared from different oil types