Effect of Freezing and Frozen Storage on Amino Acid Profile and Fatty Acid Pattern in Imported and Local Meat

Amino acid, Fatty acid, Meat, Freezing. Due to the effect of cold treatment on the amino acid profile of meat has not sufficiently studied. This study aimed to study the effect of freezing temperature and duration of frozen storage on amino acid profile and fatty acid pattern in imported beef meat, local beef meat, chicken breast and Nile tilapia fish. The effect of freezing on lipid and protein oxidative stability of meat was also measured. The selected meat under research was frozen at different temperature (7 o C) for 1month of local beef, fish and chicken breast meat and (18 o C) for 3 and 6 months of imported meat. The result show the effect of freezing on amino acid as the total amount of essential and nonessential amino acids and amount of each amino acid of meat samples are reduced during the freezing process. However there is no significant difference between the frozen imported meat beef for 3 and 6 months except glycine and glutamic acid were changed from 17.02±0.41 to ( 14.28±0.66 ; 12.73±0.36 ) and from ( 49.24±0.46 to 46.90±0.37 ; 45.05±0.38) respectively. There is a significant effect of frozen storage duration on saturated fatty acids (SFA), unsaturated fatty acids (USFA) and total fatty acids (TFAs). A significant (P >0.05) increase in total volatile nitrogen (TVN) value after freezing for 3 and 6 months in imported beef meat from 14.41±0.21 to 15.50± 0.29 and 18.25±0.27 respectively, also in frozen fish samples from 18.41±0.35 to 21.11±0.47. While there is no significant (P>0.05) difference in frozen local beef meat and frozen chicken meat samples. Moreover, there was an increment in the rate of lipid oxidation during frozen storage of the examined samples but within acceptable limit. The present study concluded that cold treatment had a great impact on chemical composition of meat especially amino acids profile and fatty acids pattern regardless the duration of freezing storage. Corresponding Author: Eman Al-Sabagh: [email protected]