Nutrition students analyze meat products conservation

UFM nutrition students, at the CTC

The meat conservation process, its nutritional evaluation and the critical points during its process, is the title of the work conducted by the Third Year students of the School of Nutrition, of Universidad Francisco Marroquín in the school-factory of Centro de Tecnología de la Carne.

«During two days the students and teachers learned the art of stuffing and we carried out the pertinent evaluations», explained UFM professor Leticia Almengor.

«Guatemala is a country with elevated meat product consumption. There is a great variety of ham and sausages in the market and often the consumers do not have the necessary knowledge to choose between a good quality product and one that has almost no meat content. 

This is why it is extremely important to learn and have the basic knowledge about the preparation and elaboration of meat products, and thus to form a criteria in order to choose better quality products and healthier ones too», says the study.

The conclusions of the study (
PDF), were that:

In order to obtain a final product free of pathogenic microorganisms you need good control of the critical control processes, in addition to good manufacturing practices. Frankfurt sausages are a source of highly biological value proteins due to their content of essential amino acids like leucine, isoleucine, lysine, valine, phenylalanine, threonine, histidine, tryptophan and methionine.  The Munich sausage has a high content of proteins, minerals and amino acids, and is to be considered that it has great amount of fat and cholesterol. The Californian chicken Ham is characterized to contain proteins of good quality and is a low fat product.Pullman Ham is a product rich in proteins and minerals; nevertheless it is necessary to be cautious due to its high content of cholesterol and fatty acids.  A strict control of the raw materials is necessary, since in the MDM case that is a product elaborated with chicken or turkey, Salmonella is an important risk factor.  CTC is in charge of controlling that during the stuffing process Good Manufacturing Practices are applies, in order to guaranty that the products are safe for human consumption; these turn around hygiene and inlay manipulation. More photos,
here.