Oil uptake by beef during pan frying: Impact on fatty acid composition

Fat entering food during frying needs to be monitored to control the nutritional properties of the products: fat penetration and fatty acid (FA) composition. The large difference between the apparent diffusion coefficients of lipids and meat fibers allows the use of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) to measure oil uptake profiles. This method, in association with analysis of FAs by gas–liquid chromatography, predicts nutritional changes. Beef samples from finishing cows given control feed or high FA supplemented feed were fried in olive oil at 130 °C and 180 °C. Frying oil penetration was quantified by computing oil signal profiles from 3D DWI. Oil penetration was deeper at 180 °C (5 mm) than at 130 °C (2.5 mm), consistent with oil penetration processes. Oil penetration evaluated with DWI was correlated (R² = 0.82) with biochemical analysis of FA composition. These results highlight the predominance of oil uptake over animal feed effects in the first millimeters of in-plane fried meat.