A high performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole-orbitrap high-resolution mass spectrometry method was developed for the simultaneous determination of six amino-carboline heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs) in pan-fried pork patties. The effects of processing conditions on the formation of these HAAs were also investigated. Results showed that the optimum extraction and purification conditions were as follows: 1.0 g of the sample was extracted with 10 mL of 1 mol/L NaOH solution-acetonitrile (4:6, V/V) added with 1.5 g of NaCl, purified on a Strata^TM-X-C column and eluted with methanol-ammonium hydroxide (90:10, V/V). The calibration curves for the six HAAs were linear in their respective concentration ranges with correlation coefficients greater than 0.996. The detection limit and quantification limit of the developed method were 0.02–0.15 μg/kg and 0.05–0.5 μg/kg, respectively. The recoveries of these HAAs were in therange of 64%–91%. The content of these six HAAs in pork patty pan-fried for 5 min was 9.50 µg/kg. Pan-fried pork patties cooked with rapeseed oil, composite-coating pot, and patty thickness of 4 cm had the highest contents of HAAs, which were 47.62, 76.83 and 29.33 µg/kg, respectively.

Sodium chloride is one of the most widely used additives in meat curing. However, cured meat products contribute to a portion of the total sodium dietary intake. Consumers and researchers’ concern about excessive sodium intake has prompted the food industry to consider ways to reduce salt content of cured meat products. The aim of this review is to provide a broad but comprehensive understanding of salt reduction strategies for cured meat products. The implications and limitations of each approach were discussed. Green technologies treatments, such as ultrasonic technology, high-pressure processing, seem to be potential to ensure microbiological safety in low-sodium cured meat products. However, these novel technologies can cause protein and fat oxidization in meat products. A combination of multiple treatments could give the desired effect. In addition, different parameter conditions need to be set according to the specific meat to achieve better salt reduction effect.

To investigate the effects of different irradiation treatments on the quality of black pepper beef during storage, a backpropagation-artificial neural network (BP-ANN) model for predicting various quality attributes of black pepper beef was developed based on physicochemical indicators. Irradiation at a dose of 3–4 kGy effectively delayed the loss of juice, lipid oxidation, and protein degradation in black pepper beef during storage, maintained its hardness and microstructure, and increased the contents of umami (Asp) and sweet (Gly, Ala and Ser) amino acids. The BP-ANN model was optimized with the juice loss, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) value, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) content, tropomyosin band intensity ratio, myosin heavy chain band intensity ratio, and total free amino acid content of irradiated black pepper beef as input variables. The ReLU function was used as the activation function, with 14 neurons in the hidden layer and 100 iterations. The results showed that the 6-14-6 BP-ANN model could predict the quality changes of irradiated black pepper beef well, and have great potential in predicting various qualities of irradiated meat products.

γ-Glutamyl peptides can enhance basic taste sensations such as saltiness, sweetness, and umaminess, while the molecular mechanism and the difference in taste enhancement remain elusive. Thus, two complex conformations: taste type 1 receptor 1 (T1R1)-MSG and taste type 1 receptor 2 (T1R2)-sucrose were constructed to form binding receptors. These peptides showed affinity for the two receptors, but a higher affinity scores and more binding amino acid residues for the T1R1-MSG receptor, implying that they may exhibit a higher umami-enhancing effect. Thereinto, γ-glutamyl alanine (γ-EA) displayed the highest affinity for the two receptors through mobilizing multiple amino acid residues to form hydrophobic and hydrogen bonds, indicating it had the highest enhancement for umaminess and sweetness among these peptides. Sensory evaluation demonstrated the enhancement of γ-EA on umaminess was superior to that of sweetness. Generally, γ-glutamyl peptides could enhance basic taste sensation via activating taste receptor, and exhibited a highest umami-enhancing effect.