Variations in the tensile adhesive strength of meat-myosin junctions due to test configurations

A model system of two thick slices of beef M. semitendinosus stuck together with a crude myosin preparation and cooked to 80°C for 1 h has been used to show the effects of testing configuration on the tensile adhesive strength (TAS) of the meat-myosin junction. TAS decreased with increasing cross-sectional area in a square cross-sectional geometry, but increasing just one dimension of a rectangular cross-section resulted in smaller, often insignificant, decreases in TAS. A hypothesis based on differences in stress distributions over the area of the adhesive joint was proposed to explain this. TAS was found to increase with increasing deformation rate, in accordance with the usual behaviour of viscoelastic materials. TAS was found to be approximately three times higher when muscle fibres in both the meat pieces forming the joint were at right angles to the junction than when one or both meat pieces contained fibres running parallel to the adhesive junction; this latter orientation, being the weaker, is therefore proposed to be the orientation that determines the initial fracture of a meat product, hence its textural properties.