Studies on vitamin E and meat quality. 2. Effect of feeding high vitamin E levels on chicken meat quality
1996
De Winne, A. | Dirinck, P.
The objective of this work was to study the influence of vitamin E (as all-rac-alpha-tocopheryl acetate) supplementation on the sensory quality of frozen chicken meat. Two dietary treatments were compared as follows: (1) the control group received a diet containing respectively 30, 20, and 15 mg of alpha-tocopheryl acetate/kg of feed for the age periods of 0-20, 21-38, and 38-45 days; (2) the supplemented group received a starter diet containing 30 mg of alpha-tocopheryl acetate/kg of feed from 0 to 20 days and a finisher diet containing 200 mg/kg of feed from 21 to 45 days. HPLC analyses showed that muscle alpha-tocopherol levels of the chickens on the supplemented diet were 6-7-fold higher than those of the chickens on the control diet. Meat quality was evaluated by sensory as well as by instrumental techniques, such as induced thiobarbituric acid values (TBA) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. It was shown that vitamin E supplementation had a beneficial effect on the sensory data and the oxidative stability of the meat as measured by TBA. GC-MS analyses also showed that the concentration of aldehydes, which are considered to be responsible for rancid off-flavors, was much more important in the control samples compared to the supplemented samples.
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