Chapter 10 Discussion Forum

DUE: SUNDAY OCTOBER 27, 2024 AT 12PM EST

While you are taking a food science class in college, your instructor invites a local cattle rancher to give a guest lecture. One of the other students in class is very curious about the “freshness” of meat that he buys at his neighborhood store. He asks the rancher if it would be a good idea for everyone to buy meat directly from the ranch and eat it as soon as possible after the meat is harvested. Surprisingly, the rancher says—taken literally the way the student suggested it—that would not be a great idea. He says the meat gets really tough and stiff shortly after it is harvested, and it doesn’t even start to get tender for about 12 hours. Even after the 12 hours, he says most of the meat from his ranch gets aged in a refrigerator for about a week to make it tender enough to sell. That means the “freshest” meat from his ranch might actually not be very good to eat right away.

Questions

1. Assuming cow muscle fibers function similarly to human muscle fibers, propose a

physiological explanation for meat losing its tenderness and becoming stiff shortly after

it is harvested.