Iridescence in Meat Caused by Surface Gratings (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Iridescence in Meat Caused by Surface Gratings (2013)

mdpi.com

50 pointsmhb17 comments

I've definitely been turned off of ham on occasion due to this property. I had no real conscious reason since I generally enjoy ham but the effect has made it less appetizing to me. I wonder how much of that was due to primarily associating the visual effect with gasoline.

I always assumed it was some kind of bacterial product from early spoilage. Nice to learn!

I've definitely noticed it on meat that has gone off, and previously was not iridescent. I wonder if bacteria create surface gratings.

Maybe the effect can manifest when oils from the meat/fat and water separate similar to the effect with gas/oil? With this hypothesis the iridescence would be incidental to the meat having gone bad but more to do with age and not maintaining structural integrity/consistency.

"You eat with your eyes first" isn't just an expression. Glowing foods tend to be not good for us, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.

> I wonder how much of that was due to primarily associating the visual effect with gasoline.

I thought, like the poster in the neighboring comment, that it could indicate early spoilage. Also with fish scales. I think fish scales are more disgusting than gasoline...

I knew some meat cuts were iridescent, never knew why.

I only have one question:

“A commercial pork (Sus scrofa domesticus) loin sample was supplied by the commercial processing facility (Morliny Sopocka, Animex, Warsaw, Poland).”

Does this mean they asked the facility for a meat sample directly, or is it the science-speak for “we bought the meat at the nearest grocery store”? The photos suggest the latter, but if so, why not just write it so?

To assure that the meat was never wrapped in plastic probably. A fact important to avoid artifacts on the methodology.

I'm unsure how a photo of a loin chop suggests it was bought at the nearest grocery store. It didn't have a package with a grocery store name.

It says it came from a commercial meat processing facility, and I don't see any reason to doubt it. These facilities pre-butcher and package the meat, and are then sent out to grocery stores or wherever. I assume they got it straight from the source to avoid any potential confounding effects of a grocery store keeping the meat out of refrigeration, or mislabeling the dates, or whatever.

Based on my experience in academia in my country, and from what I read about academia worldwide, I'd say it was indeed very likely bought from ordinary store, since it's not a department dealing specifically with food (thus having convenient access to samples). Often a group of researchers just looks for a random important-sounding subject to apply whatever methods they are familiar with and don't think much about the domain they're getting into. Sometimes the result turns out interesting, more often they publish it wherever they can and move on.

Except that they literally said "was supplied by the commercial processing facility." I don't see any reason to doubt their word. And as someone who also works in academia, in the kind of mushy low-budget research that these folks might be in, I take issue with the idea that we assume they couldn't just pick up the phone and call the meat processing plant. It's really not hard to do. I've randomly bought fish from fish processing plants, for my own personal consumption, and I didn't even have a grant and a grad student to do it.

processing facility generally doesn't mean grocery store, but the facility that butchers slaughtered animals into cuts. Potentially it could be a butcher.

MDPI journals are considered predatory by some academics.

Predatory in what sense?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5466/is-mdpi-a-...

I know it's wasteful, but I can't eat meat like this. I just lose my appetite.

I absolutely would have guessed thin film interference.

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