Lipid characteristics of commercial lamb cuts

摘要

It is important to know the composition of the food that we consume due to the current awareness about health and its relationship with the diet. The aim of this work was to assess the fatty acid composition and the total fat content of the edible portion of different commercial cuts in lamb. Ten animals, entire males belonging to the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) 'Ternasco de Aragon', weaned at about 50 days old and intensively fed with concentrate and cereal straw ad libitum until reaching 80 days-old, were used. After slaughtering, and following standard procedures, the left half carcass was divided into seven commercial cuts: leg, shoulder, neck, shoulder-ribs, loin + rack, breast and flank. Each cut was weighed, deboned and the edible part (muscle + visible fat) analyzed. The leaner cut was the leg, with a fat content of 12.5%, although not statistically different from the neck, shoulder and shoulder-ribs. The fatter cut was the breast (40%), although it contributed little to the total fat content of the animal since it represented only 4.3 % of the carcass weight. When all edible tissues were considered together, few differences were found in the percentage of fatty acids among the different cuts, and most of them fell upon minor fatty acids. Nevertheless, the leg showed the lowest percentage of stearic acid and the highest of arachidonic acid, whereas the breast had the highest concentration of palmitoleic acid and the lowest of arachidonic acid. No significant differences were found among groups of fatty acids.