Rapid Total Fat & Moisture in All Meats (Raw and Processed)

Introduction

Fat and moisture testing for foodstuff samples has traditionally been done by wet chemistry techniques, which are laborious and time consuming and often involve skilled technicians and hazardous solvents. Various rapid techniques (NIR, FT-IR, FT-NIR, and TD-NMR) have been introduced, but none have been universally accepted, due to the need for often extensive calibration development and maintenance. Near infrared (NIR) typically requires separate calibrations for every meat type (i.e. beef, chicken, pork, etc.), geographic location of a single meat type (i.e. Australian cattle vs. US cattle), and season (spring, summer, autumn, winter), yet still has challenges achieving acceptable accuracy levels.

The SMART 6^TM - ORACLE^TM is a combination system for rapid moisture and fat determination, coupling dual-frequency drying (iPower^®) in the SMART 6 with advanced NMR technology in the ORACLE. Dual-frequency drying in the SMART 6 allows for rapid and precise moisture determination. The ORACLE is a rapid time-domain NMR (TD-NMR) instrument, incorporating breakthrough technology that allows for direct determination of fat in food products. Unlike other rapid techniques, the ORACLE is able to completely isolate the detection of fat in complex matrices, which eliminates the need for calibration development. Together, the SMART 6 - ORACLE system delivers rapid, accurate, and precise total moisture and fat in raw and processed meats, while removing the cost and time of calibration maintenance and development associated with NIR.

To demonstrate the ability of the SMART 6 - ORACLE to accurately and reliably determine the moisture and fat content in meats, an assortment of 13 samples were obtained and analyzed. The samples were selected to represent a range of both matrix types, as well as relative component concentrations.