Nutritive value and display-life attributes of selenium-enriched beef-muscle foods

Our objective was to assess the nutritive value and display-life attributes of selenium-enriched beef-muscle foods. Samples of foreshank and short-loin subprimals were excised from chilled carcasses (n=20) of beef steers that were individually finished (120 days) on either supranutritional selenium (selenium-enriched; 68.1 μg Se/kg body weight/day; n=9) or adequate selenium (non-enriched; 9.1 μg Se/kg body weight/day; n=11) diets. High-selenium wheat grain was included in the diet of supranutritional selenium-fed steers to achieve selenium-enrichment. Selenium-enriched foreshank had 3.8 times more (1085 vs. 283 ng/g wet weight, P<0.01) selenium and 1.3 times more (P<0.01) glutathione peroxidase activity than non-enriched foreshank samples. Selenium-enrichment did not influence foreshank (P=0.16–0.89) moisture, ash, crude protein, and lipid contents, and expressible moisture, or short-loin (P=0.11–0.41) drip-loss percentage or color change throughout the display-life evaluation. The results indicate that, compared to non-enriched, selenium-enriched beef-muscle foods have a much higher amount of selenium and similar display-life attributes.