Intermediate moisture meat product: biological evaluation of charqui meat protein quality

Charqui is a typical salted and dry Brazilian meat product. A harsh condition for salting and drying during charqui processing could eventually damage its biological value. Therefore protein quality of raw and cooked charqui meat flours was chemically and biologically evaluated by rat growth and nitrogen balance studies. Proximate chemical compositions of desalted raw and cooked charqui flour samples showed protein content of 74.2 and 81.1%, respectively and lipid contents of 20.06 and 13.52%, respectively. There was a good balance of essential amino acids in both samples. Feeding of flour diets prepared from exhaustively desalted and dried cooked and raw charqui samples resulted in high protein efficiency ratios, in high net protein utilisations and high nitrogen balances thus showing a high biological value and also high true digestibility, with NPU similar to casein.