Meat is a primary component of many diets in the United States averaging 110 kg of meat per person between beef, pork, and chicken (Clark & Tilman, 2017). Because of its prevalence in the US consumer diet, providing meat with desirable quality attributes is critical for the long-term sustainability of the meat industry (Prayon, 2007). While some meat inherently exhibits desirable meat quality attributes, other meat products can exhibit poor quality and often utilize alternative strategies to modulate quality attributes like tenderness and color. For example, enhancement strategies, including brining, are common in the meat industry. Common ingredients in enhancement solutions include salt, sugar, and phosphate. Phosphates are a critical ingredient in fresh and processed meat that increase meat pH, improve color stability, increase water-holding capacity, improve tenderness, and can act as an antimicrobial agent and antioxidant (Wierbicki & Howker, 1976). Phosphate is a common additive that provides each of the aforementioned improvements and has been generally recognized as safe (GRAS) in the code of federal regulations (title 21; subparts A, B, E) (USDA, 2017). The meat industry has utilized phosphate through the latter half of the 1900’s in order to improve quality of meat products. During the 1970’s, over 40 billion pounds of phosphate were used in the production of meat products in brines (Molins, 1991). Today, meat processors use a variety of phosphates, including sodium tripolyphosphate, which is the standard for fresh pork.
However, as consumers have become increasingly aware of food manufacturing practices, phosphate is becoming increasingly unacceptable. This could be due to the possibility that dietary phosphate could cause kidney disease (Sekercioglu et al., 2016; Toussaint, Holt, & Toussaint, 2017). Therefore, consumers currently view phosphate as a negative and unnecessary additive to meat. Because of consumer demands, restaurants, grocery stores and certain brands have created “no-no lists” outlining and restricting several compounds used in food processing to promote clean label foods (Good Food Made Simple, 2017; Panera Bread, 2017). Because phosphate is on these lists, the pork industry needs a phosphate alternative to reformulate their products.
To achieve this goal, the objective of the current study was to analyze the effects of potassium carbonate (K2CO3) on fresh pork loin chops as a viable phosphate alternative. Potassium carbonate is commonly found in some sources of tap water and currently used in other food products such as cocoa powder, ramen noodles, and during the tenderization process of tripe (Rice, Baird, Eaton, & Clesceri, 2012). Because K2CO3 is already approved for use in meat products and has no labeling requirements at the present time (USDA, 2017), evaluation of concentrations in fresh pork products will potentially provide meat processors with a clean-label, phosphate alternative.
Initially, K2CO3 was titrated to different concentrations combined with a standard sodium chloride (NaCl) concentration to create five enhancement solutions. The treatments included a negative control of 0.18% NaCl, a positive control of 0.3% sodium tripolyphosphate (PO4) and 0.18% NaCl, and three levels of K2CO3 including 0.1% K2CO3 and 0.18% NaCl, 0.3% K2CO3 and 0.18% NaCl, and 0.5% K2CO3 and 0.18% NaCl. Treatments were injected into whole pork loins to 110% of initial green weight, cut into chops, and displayed in a simulated retail case at 4¿C for 0, 1, 2, 3, 7, and 10 days. Each day, the chops were analyzed for objective color, pH, cook loss, tenderness, and analyzed by a consumer sensory panel on day 3. Compared to the PO4 treatment in each analysis, the use of K2CO3 improved or maintained pork quality (P < 0.05). Specifically, K2CO3 at values of 0.3 and 0.5% decreased lightness, maintained redness, decreased yellowness, increased pH, decreased cook loss, and maintained tenderness. The 0.3% K2CO3 treatment had the desired effect without adding unnecessary amounts of ingredients. Therefore the 0.3% concentration was used for sensory analysis. In addition to the 0.3% concentration previously mentioned, another 0.3% concentration with an added antimicrobial, was analyzed for the sensory analysis. Both 0.3% K2CO3 treatments were compared to the NaCl control. Additionally, for the sensory panel, the K2CO3 treatments increased tenderness and juiciness while having no bitter detection with the presence of potassium. These data indicate that K2CO3 could be used as an alternative to PO4 in the fresh pork industry. Specifically, 0.3% K2CO3 increased pH, decreased L*, maintained a*, decreased b*, reduced cook loss, increased tenderness, and improved sensory attributes.