Design of a new laboratory tumbling simulator for chunked meat: Analysis, reproduction and measurement of mechanical treatment

Impact of Tumbling Process on the Toughness and Structure of Raw Beef Meat Pieces

“…Mechanical deformations of the meat piece were induced by the linear motion of the piston, which moves up and down at a pre-set frequency. The mechanical treatments of muscles were conducted using the lab-scale tumbling simulator shown in Figure 1 and detailed in [16]. This simulator makes it possible to reproduce what occurs during the meat tumbling process by applying successive mechanical deformations to the muscle that correspond to several hundred cycles of piston compression carried out perpendicular to the length of the muscle.…”

“…During tumbling, which is carried out in large rotating drums equipped with baffles or paddles, the meat pieces are subjected to friction with each other or with the baffles, or even with the drum walls, but above all to repeated variations in kinetic energy due to the meat pieces falling and colliding with other pieces, the baffles or the drum walls. All this results in a succession of very short mechanical compressions and, therefore, brief deformations of the meat [15,16]. All these mechanical actions cause changes in the structure of the meat tissue and thus bring about the degradation of the muscle fibres and connective tissue.…”

“…Daudin et al [16] developed a lab-scale tumbling simulator to reproduce what happens in industrial tumbling devices of various sizes by controlling and characterizing the mechanical deformations undergone by the muscles during tumbling. Here we used this tumbling simulator to: (1) investigate how effectively tumbling reduces the toughness of raw meat pieces cut from beef muscles known to be of intermediate toughness, and (2) to characterize the microscopic damages observed after tumbling in both muscle fibres and connective tissue.…”

Techniques for postmortem tenderisation in meat processing: effectiveness, application and possible mechanisms

“…Tumbling is a technique exerting mechanical action on muscle fibre structure and collagen fibres by combining various forms of force (e.g., gravity of meat itself, strong friction and impact forces between the meat and device) with effective moisture enhancement (salt/phosphate) (Arnau et al 2007;Ergezer & Gokce 2011;Pietrasik & Shand 2005). Numerous studies have reported that tumbling plays an important role in enhancing the rate of salt diffusion or uniform distribution, cooking yield (increased protein extraction and salt absorption), and improving tenderness (Daudin et al 2016;Jin et al 2015). Additionally, tumbling treatment manifests the ability to marinate large quantities and handle muscles with different sizes.…”

Analytical approaches of meat authentication in food

“…Additionally, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non‐destructive technique which has been successfully used for determination of water distribution in cured meat and spatial distribution of water in meat samples, with or without brine (Dolata et al ., 2004). Tumbling is a vital steps in cured or cooked meat products manufacturing (Daudin et al ., 2015) which improves the meat structure so as to appear more juicy and tender (Hullberg & Lundström, 2004). Thus, the effect of tumbling on water distribution is feasible for measurement using MRI as it permits visualisation of the three‐dimensional image of water proton density in samples.…”