Establishment of a tenderness screening index for beef cuts using instrumental and sensory texture evaluations

Meat tenderness is important for assessing quality and can be defined as the ease to chew meat, depending on several factors. The aim of this study was to establish a tenderness screening index. Moreover, we also wanted to study the socio-demographic characteristics of consumers and understand their preferences and meat consumption habits. 192 consumers were called to perform a sensory analysis to evaluate beef tenderness after grilling and classify it according to distinct tenderness classes: 1 -very hard; 2 -hard; 3 -ideal tenderness; 4 -tender; 5 -very tender. Chi-square analyses were used to analyse the consumers' survey and non-parametric tests were performed to assess differences between groups. A beef tenderness screening index was established based on Texture Profile Analysis (TPA) hard-ness and Warner-Bratzler Shear Force (WBSF), using a multiple regression analysis to establish the tenderness threshold. According to the validated model, a beef cut is tender when WBSF is below 39.60 N and simultaneously TPA hardness is below 31.89 N. In this study, tenderness thresholds for beef cuts were established through the relationship between instrumental and sensory consumer evaluations.