USA millennial and non-millennial beef consumers perception of beef, pork, and chicken

Millennials have been shown to have distinctly different behaviors; however, factors affecting their liking of beef, pork and chicken has not been fully elucidated. As millennials are current and future animal protein consumers, the question of if they have different drivers of liking for beef, pork, and chicken has not been answered. Top loin steaks cooked to 58.3 or 80 °C; and pork loin chops and chicken breasts cooked to 62.7 or 80 °C were cooked on a flat grill. Beef bottom round roasts cooked to 58.3 or 80°; and pork inside ham roasts and chicken thighs were cooked to 62.7 or 80 °C in a Crock-pot®. A descriptive flavor and texture attribute panel and a consumer central location test in four cities were used to evaluated flavor and texture attributes. Consumers were either millennials or non-millennials, and light or heavy beef-eaters. Meat descriptive flavor and texture attributes differed by cooking method, cut, and internal temperature (P < 0.05). Consumers preferred grilled meat more than meat cooked in the Crock-pot® (P > 0.05). Consumers rated grill flavor, juiciness, and tenderness (P ≥ 0.05) higher in grilled meat. Light beef-eaters, those who ate beef 2 to 4 times per month, rated overall, flavor, and species flavor lower (P < 0.05) than heavy beef-eaters, but consumers liked beef regardless of generational segment or their consumption of beef; however, millennials rated overall, overall flavor, and tenderness liking slightly lower than non-millennials. These results indicate that millennials have similar drivers of liking as non-millennials across beef, pork, and chicken protein sources.

A current review of U.S. beef flavor I: Measuring beef flavor

Historically, consumer acceptance of beef was determined by tenderness. Developments in genetics and management over the last couple of decades have improved tenderness to the point that it is secondary to other factors in beef's taste. Flavor, however, is an extraordinarily complex taste attribute dependent on biological sensors in the mouth, sinus cavity, and jaws. The culinary industry has recently focused on innovative ways to give consumers new products satisfying their curiosity about different foods, especially proteins. Competition from plant-based, cell-based, and even other animal-based proteins provides diversity in consumers' ability to select a protein that satisfies their desire to include unique products in their diet. Consequently, the beef industry has focused on flavor for the last 10 to 15 years to determine whether it can provide the guardrails for beef consumption in the future. The U.S. beef industry formed a Flavor Working Group in 2012 composed of the authors listed here to investigate new and innovative ways to manage and measure beef flavor. The results of this working group have resulted in dozens of papers, presentations, abstracts, and symposia. The objective of this manuscript is to summarize the research developed by this working group and by others worldwide that have investigated methodologies that measure beef flavor. This paper will describe the strengths of the research in beef flavor measurement and point out future needs that might be identified as technology advances.

A current review of U.S. beef flavor II: Managing beef flavor

Beef flavor continues to be one of the largest drivers of beef demand and a differentiation point of beef from other competing proteins. Tenderness has long been identified as the most important palatability trait for consumer satisfaction. However, as technological advancements and industry practices evolve and improve in response to tenderness management, flavor has emerged as a key driver of consumer satisfaction. In response, the beef industry has recently invested in research focused on beef flavor development, measurement, and management to better understand the factors impacting flavor and help beef maintain this advantage. The current review paper is the second of two such papers focused on summarizing the present knowledge and identifying knowledge gaps. While the other review focuses on current practices related to beef flavor measurement, this review will cover research findings related to beef flavor management. Numerous production and product management factors influence beef flavor. Pre-harvest factors including marbling level, animal genetics/cattle type, diet, and animal age, can influence beef flavor. Moreover, numerous post-harvest product management factors, including product type, aging length and conditions, cookery methods, product enhancement, muscle-specific factors, packaging, retail display factors, and antimicrobial interventions, have all been evaluated for their impact on beef flavor characteristics. Results from numerous studies evaluating many of these factors will be outlined within this review in order to present management and production chain factors that can influence beef flavor.

Trained sensory descriptors and volatile aroma compounds of USDA Select steaks using five grill temperatures

Thirty-three USDA Select boneless top loins were selected from carcasses at a commercial major packing plant, vacuum-packaged, and aged for 14 d (4 °C). The loins were then divided into 10 portions (5 grill temperatures for each of trained sensory panel and Warner-Bratzler shear force). Flat-top electric grills were pre-heated to 1 of 5 different temperatures: 149 °C (149), 177 °C (177), 204 °C (204), 232 °C (232), or 260 °C (260). Steaks were placed on the grill, turned when the internal temperature reached 35 °C and removed when the internal temperature reached 71 °C. A trained sensory panel evaluated ten basic flavors and five texture attributes. Extra cubes from each sample were frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80 °C for GC/MS volatile aroma compound analysis. Beef identity, brown, and roasted flavor descriptors increased linearly (P < 0.001) while bloody/serumy tended to decrease (P = 0.016) and sour flavor decreased (P = 0.006) linearly as grill temperature increased. Furthermore, burnt (deviation P = 0.008) and bitter (deviation P = 0.012) flavor descriptors were affected by effects other than linear or quadratic, while umami (P = 0.002) and overall sweet (P = 0.016) flavors increased quadratically from 149 to 232 then declined at 260 grill temperatures. Two alcohols, eight aldehydes, four alkanes, three furans, eight ketones, and twelve pyrazines were impacted by differences the grill temperature. Increasing grill temperature increases volatile compounds, primarily from the Maillard reaction, that improve positive beef flavor descriptors.

A South African beef quality survey

In this study a survey of various meat quality characteristics of beef loin cuts was conducted in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality (Gauteng Province of South Africa) to determine the variation and consistency of beef quality of products purchased over time. Four hundred and twenty beef loin samples were collected on 20 occasions over 308 days from 13 outlets of 2 supplier types (butcher and supermarket). Packaging type, label information and price were considered for the evaluation of meat tenderness, colour, cooking loss, tissue composition and steak thickness. The results demonstrate that large variation in characteristics relevant to consumers' choice and satisfaction among and within different products sold as porterhouse steak in South Africa. In particular, muscle tenderness varied (P < 0.0001) across the 20 products and also showed significant inconsistency over the 20 purchasing events for certain products.

Transformation of highly marbled meats under various cooking processes

Cooking induces modifications in meat structure and composition, affecting its sensory and nutritional properties. These changes depend on the cooking method and meat characteristics. In the present study, beef were cooked in three different ways-grilling, boiling, and sous-vide cooking-with two endpoint temperatures, 55 °C and 77 °C, to better understand the general impact of cooking on the structure of fatty meat. Light microscopy was used to visualize muscle, connective, and adipose tissues. After cooking, muscle fibers were more compact, which can be attributed to perimysium shrinkage and water transfer, for all cooking processes except grilling at 55 °C. The cross-sectional area of muscle fibers was not impacted by cooking, regardless of the temperature or cooking method. Connective tissue between adipocytes was affected by cooking at 77 °C, but not at 55 °C. Despite the cooking method used, cooking to well-done (77 °C) clearly affected the structure of the perimysium of beef, possibly because of collagen denaturation.

Tumbling and subsequent aging improves tenderness of beef longissimus lumborum and semitendinosus steaks by disrupting myofibrillar structure and enhancing proteolysis

Tenderness is an important sensory attribute to the overall eating experience of beef. Identifying novel methods to ensure consistent tenderness, especially in inherently tough cuts, is critical for the industry. This study investigated if tumbling without brine inclusion could be an effective method to improve the quality and palatability attributes of beef longissimus lumborum (LL) and semitendinosus (ST) steaks. Furthermore, interactions with postmortem aging were evaluated to determine how tumbling might affect protein degradation and muscle ultrastructure. At 5 d postmortem, pairs of LL and ST muscles from beef carcasses (n = 16) were bisected, vacuum packaged, and tumbled for 0, 40, 80, or 120 min. Sections were divided and subsequently aged an additional 0 or 10 d at 2 °C. Tumbling for any duration improved instrumental tenderness of LL (P < 0.001) but not ST (P > 0.05) steaks, regardless of aging time. Tumbling exacerbated moisture loss in both muscles shown by greater purge and cooking losses (P < 0.05). Myofibrillar fragmentation was induced through tumbling in both muscles (P < 0.001), which was supported by transmission electron microscopy images. Tumbling for 120 min followed by 10 d of aging resulted in less abundant intact troponin-T in both LL and ST (P < 0.05), as well as less intact desmin in ST (P < 0.05); however, calpain-1 autolysis was not affected by tumbling (P > 0.05). No effects of tumbling, aging, nor the interaction were found for the content and solubility of collagen (P > 0.05). Consumer panelists (n = 120/muscle) rated LL steaks tumbled for any duration higher for tenderness and overall liking compared to control steaks (P < 0.05). For ST, significant interactions were found for consumer liking of tenderness and juiciness. In general, tumbling without subsequent aging resulted in poorer juiciness than non-tumbled (P < 0.05), while at 10 d no differences in juiciness were found between treatments (P > 0.05). For ST steaks that were aged 10 d, 120 min of tumbling resulted in greater tenderness liking than non-tumbled steaks (P < 0.05). These results suggest that tumbling would result in myofibrillar fragmentation and may benefit the degradation of myofibrillar proteins; however, there would be negligible impacts on collagen. Accordingly, tumbling without brine inclusion alone may be sufficient to improve tenderness and overall liking of LL steaks, while combined tumbling with subsequent postmortem aging would be necessary to improve tenderness liking of ST.

Cooking Surface Temperatures, Steak Thickness, and Quality Grade Effects on Volatile Aroma Compounds

Volatile aroma compounds were evaluated in USDA Top Choice and Select beef top loin steaks cut 1.3 cm (THIN) or 3.8 cm (THICK) and cooked on a commercial flat top grill at 177°C (LOW) or 232°C (HIGH) grill surface temperature. Gas chromatography/mass spectrophotometry was used to evaluate volatile aroma compounds. USDA Select steaks had more 2-octene and less trimethyl pyrazine in (P &lt; 0.05) THIN steaks than THICK steaks, whereas Choice was unaffected by steak thickness (P &gt; 0.05). Benzene acetaldehyde was higher and 4-hydroxybenzoic acid was higher in Select LOW grill temperatures compared with Select HIGH grill temperatures, whereas 5-methyl-2-furan carboxaldehyde was only present in Choice HIGH grill temperatures (P &lt; 0.05). Two acids, 3 alcohols, 1 aldehyde, 1 alkane, and 1 ketone volatile aroma compound were higher (P &lt; 0.05) for LOW compared with HIGH. Conversely, 5 alcohols, 2 aldehydes, 2 alkanes, all 4 furans, 6 ketones, 4 pyrazines, along with 1H-indole, 2 pyrroles, 2 pyridines, and 1 benzene aroma compound were higher (P &lt; 0.05) in HIGH compared with LOW. Additionally, 1 alcohol, 2 aldehydes, 1 ketone, 1 sulfur-containing, and 6 other volatile compounds were lower, whereas 1 acid, 1 alcohol, 1 aldehyde, 2 furans, 1 ketone, 3 pyrazines, 1 sulfur-containing, and 1 other volatile compound were higher in the THIN compared with THICK. Some aroma compounds such as 2-butanone, 4-methyl-2-pentanone, 1-ethyl-1H-pyrrole, 1-methyl-1H-pyrrole, and 2-methyl-pyridine were only present in THICK cooked HIGH (P &lt; 0.05). Steak thickness and grill temperature are important factors to consider in the development of positive Maillard reaction products. Key findings are that high grill temperatures and/or thick steaks with longer grilling times are required for the development of key Maillard reaction products and many Maillard reaction products were only found in the most severe high-temperature, long-time grilling scenarios.

Drivers of Consumer Liking for Beef, Pork, and Lamb: A Review

Tenderness, juiciness, and flavor have been associated with consumer acceptance of beef, lamb, and pork. Drivers of consumer liking are interrelated across these species, but there are differences in consumer preferences. Animal age, animal diet, and subsequent marbling impact consumer liking across species. For beef, consumer research prior to the 1990s showed that tenderness was the main driver of liking. Consumer tenderness and juiciness liking are highly correlated. More recent research has shown that as overall tenderness improved and tenderness variation decreased, flavor has become a more important driver of beef consumer liking. Flavor is affected by consumer preparation methods, familiarity with different flavor presentations, and animal production systems. Animal diet impacts consumer perception of beef tenderness and flavor, especially when comparing forage-fed versus grain-fed beef. Flavor preferences vary across countries more so than preferences for beef based on consumer tenderness preferences and are most likely influenced by the consumption of locally produced beef and the flavor-derived type of beef traditionally consumed. Drivers of pork consumer liking have been shown to be affected by pH, color, water holding capacity, animal diet, and the presence of boar taint compounds. While tenderness and juiciness continue to be drivers of consumer liking for pork, flavor, as impacted by animal diet and the presence of boar taint compounds, continues to be a driver for consumer liking. For lamb, the flavor, as affected by diet, and animal age continue to be the main drivers of consumer liking. Lamb consumers vary across countries based on the level of consumption and preferences for flavor based on cultural effects and production practices.