From flask to sausage
At the current scale of the food industry, it is perhaps impossible to completely abandon "chemistry", but it is possible to pick up compounds in its arsenal that are as close as possible to natural and harmless to humans. The experience of Nikolai Vekshin from the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests that scientists are quite capable of such a task. But do industrialists accept safer technologies?
Emergency in the city of MirnyIn the summer of this year, a report appeared in the press about the mass poisoning of workers of the shift settlement of the ALROSA mining and processing plant (Mirny, Yakutia) with a seemingly harmless lunch.
As revealed by the inspection of Rospotrebnadzor, the cause of poisoning was nitrite – a salt of nitric acid, which for unknown reasons was used in cooking instead of ordinary table salt.
For the first time, the dangerous properties of nitrites in our country were discussed in the 70s, when several mass poisoning with watermelons occurred in Uzbekistan due to excessive fertilization of plants with ammonium nitrate, related to nitrates, i.e. nitric acid salts. In plants, nitrogen undergoes complex transformations, during which, at an intermediate stage, nitrates are converted into nitrites.
Such extreme situations, fortunately, are quite rare, but it is impossible to completely exclude the ingress of nitrates and nitrites into our body in the current, especially urban, environment. And although now the products of fields and gardens are rarely overfed with nitrogen fertilizers due to their high cost, and the excess of nitrates in the water is strictly controlled (with the exception of artesian springs and wells), the danger may come from food of animal origin.
Being present even in insignificant concentrations in food and water, nitrites are easily absorbed into the blood, where they react with hemoglobin, which is converted into methemoglobin as a result of oxidation of iron molecules. As a result, the transport function of red blood cells deteriorates and even with sufficient oxygen content in the blood, tissue hypoxia can develop – a violation of cell respiration. The lack of oxygen in the cells adversely affects the activity of the entire body: fatigue increases in humans, heart palpitations increase, growth may slow down. With prolonged intake of nitrites with food, the body begins to absorb iodine worse, which is fraught with thyroid dysfunction. In addition, in the human body, these substances are reduced to nitrosoamines, which provoke the occurrence of cancer.
Why are nitrites mixed into food?In natural meat, the level of nitrites is low – up to 5-25 mg / kg, in fish their content is 2-15 mg/ kg.
But nitrite salt is added to finished meat products (especially sausage) in order to improve its commercial qualities and for longer storage. It is enough to recall a bitten apple, darkening in the air. Minced meat is also oxidized, turning into a gray-brown unappetizing mass.
To prevent the destruction of minced meat and meat products obtained from them during processing and storage, three approaches are widely used: air pumping, nitrites and various chemical preservatives. Pumping air allows you to remove oxygen from the air space of the container in which the product is stored, but not the oxygen that is originally contained in the cytoplasm of muscle cells and in blood vessels. Inactivation of this oxygen is achieved by the introduction of nitrites. These are the technological requirements that are mandatory for all meat processing industries. The SanPiN (code of sanitary rules and regulations) regulates the permissible maximum content of nitrites in meat products at the level of 30-50 mg/ kg, depending on the type of product: in smoked sausage, they can be up to 150 mg / kg, in boiled sausage – up to 50-60 mg / kg. Nitric acid salts are also used in the production of some cheeses; for example, Kostroma cheese contains 30-140 mg/kg of nitrates and 0.1 mg/kg of nitrites.
Taking into account the ability of nitrite- and nitrate-containing additives, digested even in minimal concentrations, to accumulate in the body, the method of improving the commercial qualities of meat with their help can be attributed to potentially dangerous food processing techniques for human health, and therefore this technology of processing raw materials has recently been increasingly looking for an alternative.
"Artificial respiration apparatus" for cellsThe Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences from Pushchino, Moscow region has developed a technology for removing excess oxygen from minced meat cells by introducing cellular respiration substrates, which are natural food additives.
The proposed substances – and these are nicotinamide dinucleotide (NADH) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) present in any living cell, as well as some completely harmless dicarboxylic acids – allow meat products to be stored in excellent quality much longer than is possible now. These substrates extinguish the harmful effect of excess oxygen on minced meat in the following way: acting as an "artificial respiration apparatus", they encourage meat cells to "breathe" for the last time on their own, outside the animal's body, while using oxygen from the environment.
The research is led by the leading researcher of the Institute, Doctor of Biological Sciences Nikolay Vekshin. According to the scientist, "the concentration of oxygen in cells and vessels is approximately 250 microns. To remove this amount of oxygen, it is enough to introduce 400-500 microns of respiratory substrates. We have developed a complex of four food additives, which are introduced one after the other. The alternation of dietary supplements is due to the fact that there are four stages in the sausage making process, where exactly one of the dietary supplements is triggered, and not all together. The first supplement is designed to remove intracellular oxygen, the second – to inhibit peroxidation, the third – to remove extracellular oxygen, the fourth (a kind of natural antibiotic) – to prevent contamination by microorganisms. Separately, supplements also work well, but still not as effective. Research in the laboratory is going well. When these complex additives are added, the sausage stuffing is stored without spoilage for several weeks, and the sausage can be stored for forty days instead of ten."
The fate of the patentThe author of the method, Nikolai Lazarevich Vekshin, spoke about the prospects of its implementation to the correspondent STRF.ru .
– It is known that meat processing plants often use ice cream meat. Do your supplements work in it? And is it necessary for the initiation of their activity to have functioning enzymes in meat?– The presence of functioning enzymes in meat is necessary only for the first dietary supplement.
For others, it is not necessary. In frozen meat, enzymes are almost as active as in fresh meat (of course, if fresh meat is frozen, and not rotten meat).
– Standard technology involves the protection of minced meat fats from oxidation, the so-called rancidity. Does your technology work in this regard too?– Our proposed method has antioxidant properties in relation to fats.
– Is it possible to recommend these additives to cheese producers?– It is unlikely that this technique will work completely, but the individual components of the additives will probably work well.
Our team is ready to develop a way to store cheese-makers' products by modifying the available dietary supplements "for cheese". To do this, cheesemakers need to clearly formulate the task and send us a recipe for "standard" cheese.
– How do you assess the profitability of this method?– Low concentrations of respiration substrates are required for processing meat using this method (no more than a kilogram of food additives is spent per ton of meat), i.e. the cost of purchasing nitrite-free technology is an insignificant part of the cost of products produced by meat processing plants.
I would like meat processing plants, as well as companies selling food additives, to pay attention to this.
– Have your additives been tested in production conditions? If so, are they ready to be put into widespread practice?– Our technology has been tested at meat processing plants in Vyatka Polyany (Kirov region), as well as in St. Petersburg.
However, we have no feedback from production workers. When the technology was tested in the Kirov region, we were sent only copies of bacteriological analyses, without test certificates. Moreover, the promised money (except for the advance) was not paid. When we tested it in St. Petersburg, we did not achieve any official test report at all, having received only e-mail messages. There are no implementations of this product at meat processing plants yet, since no meat processing plant has signed a contract, and without it we do not intend to give our technology for free. So sausage in stores is still with nitrites, and our patent "Method of cooking nitrite-free sausage products" is lying idle.
– But where did these studies find a response? Or are you and your colleagues working on naked enthusiasm, without any support?– Our work was supported by a grant from the RFBR-ofi 04-04-08146, became a prize–winner (second place) of the Business of Innovative Technologies 2006 competition, received medals with diplomas at the exhibitions Archimedes and High Technologies of the XXI Century, and in 2007 won the Russian Innovation Competition.
In addition, we have developed methods of instrumental quality control of meat products for the detection of damaged proteins, enzymes and lipid peroxides. Further development of research and their implementation can be carried out in a short time (within a year) and will require the attraction of financial resources of about 50 million rubles.
Waiting for feedbackIt would seem that sausage manufacturers should already be in line for Vekshin additives, because comparatively small investments in technology will allow them to produce a qualitatively different product – delicious, safe for consumers, with a long shelf life.
It can be assumed that the improved qualities will allow the implementation of a new product at a higher price, which means that they will ensure the return on initial investments. Why are manufacturers in no hurry to introduce a new technology? On behalf of the editorial board, we sent a letter to the heads or chief technologists of ten leading Moscow meat processing plants, asking them to answer simple questions:
Are you aware of this technology?
Have the developers asked you to try it out?
Is the plant interested in introducing this kind of innovation (not necessarily this particular technology)?
Perhaps similar innovations are already being implemented?
What prevents the introduction of such innovations in the industry?
There were no responses from the meat processing plants "Mikoyanovsky", "Cherkizovsky", "Ramensky", "Ostankino". "Malakhovsky", "Dymov", "Tagansky" and "Mortadel" thanked for the information, but they have not yet indicated further interest in the new technology. Representatives of "KampoMos" and "Tsaritsyno" showed a little more willingness to move towards the production of products that are safe for consumers.
The most detailed answer to our questions was sent by the technologist of "KampoMos" Dmitry Ershov, who tried to explain the positions of the manufacturers. The fact is that sodium nitrate allows manufacturers to solve several tasks at once: it promotes the formation of pink coloring of finished sausages; has a bactericidal and bacteriostatic effect (that is, it affects the shelf life of finished products); has an antioxidant effect; participates in the formation of taste and aroma of finished sausages and delicacies. Plus, sodium nitrite or nitrite salt are available on the market, and the technology of their application has already been debugged. These qualities – versatility, low price and availability – so far tip the scales towards the use of sodium nitrite.
Dmitry Ershov admitted that he had not yet heard about Vekshin's developments, and although he personally considers the new technology quite interesting, it is difficult to say anything definite about their prospects at the "CAMPOMOS".
Andrey Nazarov, the head of the development department of Tsaritsyno, also became interested in the development of Vekshin, whose coordinates we gave to Nikolai Vekshin. However, even in this case, the contract was not signed, according to Nikolai Vekshin, negotiations were postponed indefinitely.
Who else can I expect an answer from?Russian manufacturers have no material interest in introducing innovations, and current affairs, inertia of thinking, and production itself will always hinder the promotion of new technologies.
But in this case, we are talking not just about a new, but also about a safer food manufacturing technology. In this case, maybe the state (whose responsibilities include protecting the health of citizens) will force industrialists to produce not only high-quality, but also safe products through certification bodies?
After all, after achieving the coveted abundance on the shelves of our stores, the question of the harmlessness of products becomes more acute. And in order not only to maintain its previous positions on the domestic market, but also to enter the international market, a manufacturer of any rank must promptly and competently, relying on the achievements of science, take its activities to a new level.
Larisa Ivleva, for STRF.ruPortal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru