Meat + Poultry - November 2016 - 19

INGREDIENT ESSENTIALS * ADVERTORIAL

Clean-Label Food Quality Ingredients Entice Millenials to
Grill More Meat and Poultry
As temperatures rise, consumers take dinner outside. The grill gets fired up, with burgers and hot dogs on the menu.
According to research from Chicago-based
Mintel, Millennials are particularly attracted
to outdoor cooking, with eight in 10 consumers aged 25 to 34 years owning a grill. They
also are a discriminating demographic when
it comes to grocery shopping, making clean
label, fresh and local a priority.
"No matter who's doing the grilling, the
results are always better when you start with
better ingredients," said Sally Kuzemchak, a registered dietitian, author of the blog Real Mom
Nutrition, and a member of the Applegate Sandwich Board, an advisory group to Applegate,
Bridgewater, N.J. "This includes using meat and
poultry free from artificial ingredients, preservative, antibiotics and added hormones."
As consumer demand for such free-from formulations continues to rise, meat and poultry
processors are moving away from synthetic
ingredients that preserve the color and flavor
of uncooked "grilling" meats, most notably beef
and turkey burgers, as well as hot dogs and
other fully cooked refrigerated meats.
According to The Power of Meat 2015 study
from the North American Meat Institute, 65%
of consumers sift through meat packages every
time they shop. This is because product appearance is a key purchase decision. In fact, it's the
No. 2 factor when selecting and buying meat
and poultry. Price trumps appearance.
When it comes to burgers for the grill, con-

sumers seek out refrigerated packs of bright
cherry-red colored fresh beef. Turkey burgers
need to be pink, not oxidized grey.
"Humans are visually oriented," said Herbert
Stone, spokesperson and past-president, Institute of Food Technologists, Chicago, and an
authority on sensory science based in Menlo
Park, Calif. "What we see directly impacts our
expectations about the taste of that product.
"When consumers shop, their choices are
impacted by how the product appears," Dr.
Stone said. "This is a problem when it comes
to packaged meat and poultry products that
are susceptible to surface oxidation. The
consumer is unlikely to purchase product
that looks grey. Packaging materials-and
ingredients with antioxidant properties-are
designed to slow the rate of oxidation and
thus extend the product's visual appeal."

Research shows that the a* values of ground turkey decreased during five days of dark
storage followed by nine days of simulated retail display. Both samples treated with the
acerola and rosemary extract blend (NaturFORT™ AR 101 Liquid) experienced a slower rate
of color loss, as compared to rosemary extract alone (CA-FORT™ 1010 Liquid). Increasing the
application rate of the blended ingredient provided a slight improvement in color retention.

Kemin Food Technologies, Des Moines,
Iowa, offers a range of ingredients to improve color stability in meat and poultry.
The science-focused company uses conventional plant breeding along with extraction and blending technologies to produce
plant-based extracts with highly active ingredients. Many are considered clean label
by the food industry.
Rosemary and green tea extracts are
known for their ability to delay color and
flavor loss in meat and poultry. The main
difference between the two plant extracts
is that green tea extract has a lower negative flavor contribution to the final product. Thus, using a lower level of rosemary
extract in combination with green tea extract allows the manufacturer to increase
the natural plant extract usage rate, often
resulting in an extract blend that works
better in the meat product than using
rosemary alone.
"When used in combination, rosemary
and green tea extracts are effective ingredients to help extend the appearance,
taste and quality of meat and poultry," said
Courtney Schwartz, senior marketing communications manager at Kemin. "Both extracts contain unique phenolic compounds
that function as free-radical scavengers,
working synergistically to delay lipid and
meat pigment degradation."
What makes these two phenolic extracts
even more powerful is the addition of
acerola cherry extract. Extracted from the
namesake wild plant grown in tropical and
subtropical regions, acerola extract is a concentrated source of vitamin C.
"Our plant extract blends delay both lipid
and myoglobin oxidation, thereby delaying the onset of color loss and maintaining
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Meat + Poultry - November 2016

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