A paradigm shift occurred in domestic fresh meat merchandising in the late 1990’s, away from traditional in-store meat cutting. The rapid changes of the domestic grocery landscape resulted in meat processors building entire facilities to fulfill retailers’ needs.
Processors began cutting boxed pork and beef wholesale cuts into case-ready, pre-priced, retail packages under USDA-FSIS inspection before distributing to retailers. Another part of this case-ready trend was that retailers wanted the product to be “dummy-proof” for the consumer, so essentially all pork and beef cuts merchandised were “enhanced.”
Enhancement is an industry slang term for needle injection of fresh meat with a solution, but the terms deep basted and marinated, both popularized in by the poultry industry, have similar meanings. Retailers had processors inject whole-muscle beef and pork with a solution of approximately 10% added water containing up to 0.5% salt and 0.5% phosphate. The water served as the vehicle to deliver salt, a flavoring and phosphate, increasing the pH of meat, thus collectively improving cooked meat juiciness, tenderness, and flavor, “i.e. dummy-proofing.”
Consumers liked the palatability of enhanced pork, a finding that is well supported by research. However, consumers soon became averse to the added ingredients and began to demand a “clean label.”
Fast forward to 2012, when I started helping David Newman purchase pork chops for the first National Pork Benchmarking Study. In that study, almost 46% of the packages of pork loin chops available at retail nationwide were enhanced. When the study was conducted for the fourth time in 10 years in 2022, you could barely find enhanced pork, with less than 4% of pork chops available at retail being enhanced.
Consumers drove rapid changes at the meat case, despite enjoying the eating quality of the food. In theory, consumers did not know exactly what phosphate was, so they deduced it must be bad.
This is an interesting case study. These products had very transparent labels, clearly including the ingredients, but this processing method has largely been eliminated. The American consumer appears to want a “natural” product that tastes good. The good news for consumers is that it is available!
The 2015 iteration of the Benchmarking Study had almost 26% of the non-enhanced pork chops classified by mechanical tenderness evaluation as “not tender” and, by 2022, it was less than 1%. American pork producers are producing pork chops that are “naturally enhanced,” if cooked to 145 degrees Fahrenheit.
Read More:
Want Better Pork? Use a meat thermometer!
Consumers Prefer Pork Cooked to 145 Degrees
How Do You Like Your Pork Chops? 145 Please.
