Impact of Food Service Cooking on the Yield and Fat Content of Commercial Ground Meats and a Plant‐Based Meat Substitute
Maria Victoria Acevedo‐Estupinan, Ipek Bayram, Jean Alamed, Carolina Cantele, Vinatee Patil, Peyman Ebrahimi, Alexander Ong, Ken Toong, Kyle A. McKillop, Naomi K. Fukagawa, Eric A. DeckerABSTRACT
Collecting data on cooking yields of different food products is critical for accurately calculating food composition and nutritional changes after food processing. Ground meat is a good example of a food product that will undergo significant yield changes during cooking. This manuscript investigates yield changes as well as changes in fat and moisture content of ground beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and a plant‐based meat product cooked in a food service facility. The findings demonstrated a strong relationship between the initial fat content of the meat and yield, with higher fat content resulting in decreased yield. It was also observed that in meats with lower fat content, moisture loss had a bigger impact on yield than fat loss. The findings of this study will help in the calculation of nutritional content of cooked meat and may help in the use of future technologies such as artificial intelligence to estimate the nutritional content of meats.