Effect of Process Temperature on the Physical State of Beef Meat Constituents – Implications on Diffusion Kinetics during Osmotic Dehydration

Changes in the physical state of muscle cell membranes, induced by low temperatures, can affect the efficiency of osmotic dehydration of meat. The objective of this study was to relate the diffusion kinetics observed during osmotic processing with changes in the physical state of constituents in meat tissue, thus explaining the deviation from linearity observed in Arrhenius modeling of water loss kinetics at low temperatures. Beef meat was osmotically dehydrated at temperatures between 6 and 18 °C. Water loss and solids gain were measured, and their corresponding mass transfer coefficients were estimated using the Peleg’s model. Arrhenius modeling of the water diffusion coefficients versus temperature demonstrated the existence of two linear regions intersecting at around 11–12 °C, implying a physical-state change of the meat tissue. Using differential scanning calorimetry, an endothermic transition at around 12 °C was noted, which might be attributed to a phase transition of the cell membrane lipids from a solid gel phase to a liquid-crystalline phase. The results provide useful information on the temperature dependence of the physical state of meat constituents governing water diffusion process in meat.