SMARTFRYS - Approximately "Fresh" Quality of Meat with New Freeze Technology, 2018

Novel freezing solutions are constantly being developed to reduce quality loss in meat production chains. However, there is limited focus on identifying the sensitive analytical tools needed to directly validate product changes that result from potential improvements in freezing technology. To benchmark analytical tools relevant to meat research and production, pork samples were frozen using traditional (-25°C, -35°C) and cryogenic freezing (-196°C). Three classes of analyses were tested for their capacity to separate different freeze treatments: thaw loss testing, bioelectrical spectroscopy (nuclear magnetic resonance, microwave, bioimpedance) and low-temperature microscopy (cryo-SEM). A general effect of freeze treatment was detected with all bioelectrical methods. Yet, only cryo-SEM resolved quality differences between all freeze treatments, not only between cryogenic and traditional freezing. The detection sensitivity with cryo-SEM may be explained by testing meat directly in the frozen state without prior defrosting. Advantages, shortcomings and cost factors in using analytical tools for quality monitoring in the meat sector were discussed. Datasets were obtained using different technical analyses, as specified in the manuscript; including spectroscopic data and imaging data. All files contain data and documents that are linked to individual units and figures of the publication "Detectability of the degree of freeze damage in meat depends on analytic-tool selection".

新型冷冻方案正持续开发，以减少肉类生产链中的品质损耗。然而，针对识别敏感分析工具的研究仍显不足——这类工具需能直接验证冷冻技术潜在改进所引发的产品变化。为对肉类研究与生产相关的分析工具进行基准测试，研究人员采用传统冷冻（-25℃、-35℃）与深低温冷冻（-196℃）处理猪肉样本。研究测试了三类分析方法区分不同冷冻处理的能力：解冻损失测试、生物电谱学（核磁共振、微波、生物阻抗）及低温显微技术（冷冻扫描电子显微镜，cryo-SEM）。所有生物电方法均检测到冷冻处理的总体效应。然而，仅冷冻扫描电子显微镜能分辨所有冷冻处理间的品质差异——不仅限于深低温与传统冷冻之间。冷冻扫描电子显微镜的检测灵敏度或可通过其无需预先解冻、直接测试冷冻状态肉类的特性得以解释。研究还探讨了肉类行业中使用分析工具进行品质监测的优势、不足及成本因素。数据集通过手稿中详述的各类技术分析获取，涵盖光谱数据与成像数据。所有文件包含的数据及文档均与论文《肉类冷冻损伤程度的可检测性取决于分析工具的选择》中的独立单元及图表相关联。