Products of chemical reactions that occur during high-temperature heat treatment of the meat products

Abstract

Recently the actively active studies have begun devoted to the accumulation of «harmful» substances in food products, which are supposedly accumulated in the body of a person who often consumes these products. Meat, as a source of full-featured animal protein, is especially popular in this aspect. For the preparation of meat products various types of heat treatment are used, almost each of which will inevitably lead to the destruction of some of the chemical compounds originally present in the product, and the formation of completely new chemical compounds, which can often be harmful to the human body. During high-temperature heat treatment (mainly frying), some chemical reactions in meat products occur, which lead to the formation of heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAA) in it. Due to the great variety of raw meat and cooking recipes, during the heat treatment HAA’s of various classes are formed, each of them will be peculiar for the particular type of raw material or recipe components (with the exception of MeIQx and PhIP, which always form during frying). The more complete understanding of the HAA’s formation mechanism will help study the products of Maillard reactions and Strecker degradation. In this work we studied the formation of HAA’s as a result of the cyclization of creatine and the detaching of water (dehydration) from it during temperature exposure. The classification of the compounds formed as a result of these reactions is presented and the main classes of the HAA obtained in result are considered. The questions of the influence of various factors on amount of HAA formed, such as the fat content, the introduction of Fe2+, Fe3+, are raised. In the future it is necessary to conduct studies of the quantitative content of HAA in meat products to complement the already actively ongoing work on the study of xenobiotics consumed by humans with food, which will give a more comprehensive picture of the carcinogens content in food products.

Keywords

• heterocyclic aromatic amines
• carcinogens
• meat products