Mararac, Sharmaine B.

BS Biology 2-4

Biochemistry Critique Paper #1

On September 11, 2017, a journal entitled “Analysis of Meat Flavor Compounds in

Jinghai Yellow Chicken and Fast-growing Commercial Chicken and their Crossbreed” by
Xia, Kaizhou, Yangyang, et al. (2017) was published under Journal of Food, Nutrition and
Population Health. This study aimed to evaluate the inosine 5’-monophosphate (IMP), thiamine,
amino acid and fat acid of meat from Jinghai Yellow Chicken, as well as with fast-growing
commercial chicken and their crossbreed. The study was performed to determine how different
meat flavor compounds used in Jinghai Yellow chicken which is considered to be a high-quality
but small-sized product popular among consumers differ for the common aforementioned species
of Jinghai Yellow chicken, the commercial chicken, and even their crossbreeds, and how these
components affect the resulting flavor, and therefore the overall quality suitable for future work
of breeding and strain selecting of the species.
As already stated by the journal’s introduction, past studies have already established that
inosine 5’-monophosphate (IMP), amino acid (AA), fatty acid (FA) levels, and breed [1,10], etc.
along with thiamine levels in muscle tissues from Jinghai Yellow chicken were determined to
evaluate their respective flavor compounds. Methods included raising chicks from a commerical
hatchery and creating groups based on (1) Jinghai Yellow chicken (JJ), (2) fast-growing
commercial strain (BB), and (3) their crossbreeds (BJ). The two latter groups emerged from
when the flaw of the initial breed of Yellow chicken is its limited and “slow growing speed”,
making it less comparative and making room to ask for improved breeds of the same chicken,
hence the purpose of this study, fulfilling the need of better-tasting/quality poultry products
amidst the growing popularity of chicken meat products in the market in general. The birds were
exposed to similar environmental and feeding conditions in an open-sided poultry shelter with
thick padding and free access to water and feed. As per the NRC (1994) guidelines, basal diets
were the basal diet ingredients from Yangzhou Hope Feed Corp. in Yangzhou, China, and meat
quality analyses were then made through preparation of supernatants, homogenization, and the
use of centrifuge. Thiamine was determined by high performance liquid chromatography, amino
acid content determination was refered to People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) national standard,
and determination of fatty acids referred to PRC’s national standard’s gas chromatograph
method. However, in this paper we will not thoroughly discuss methods, but lean more on the
results and discuss the concepts behind these results, and how this relates to the journal’s
objectives.
As remarked by Kawai et al., meat quality depends on the nutrition elements, meat
condition, and flavor elements. In terms of Thiamine, in breast muscles, JJ was observed to have
the highest level of thiamine than the rest, while JJ and BJ had higher level thiamine levels than
BB in breast muscle and thigh muscle, which arguably could be due to genetic differences. It was
also reported that different breeds/strains contained different levels of flavor precursors leading
to various types and concentrations of volatile compounds (Jayasena et al., 2013). Thiamine is an
important bioactive compound which produces nitrogen-containing volatile compounds when
heated. These degradation products contribute to the flavor of meat. Results indicated that
pedigree JJ and the crossbreed BJ had higher level of thiamine than BB which may indicate
better performance of meat flavor.
Meanwhile, after reading that that amino acids are considered to be important flavor
precursors in meat as the product from its reaction with sugar contributed to the formation of
meat flavor, while fatty acids are important components in metabolizing energy, signaling
processes, and membrane formation, while seeing in the experiment that in breast muscle, JJ had
higher levels of specific amino acids compared with BB and BJ, but the latter performed better in
levels of unsaturated fatty acids and was even extremely higher in C22:6 levels.
I think an obvious point that can be of concern in terms of this chosen journal is that most
of us’ our understanding, referring to undergraduate students doing review papers like myself, is
not developed enough that we can freely comprehend and digest information we read in medical
researches. I understand how meat flavor compounds are the focus of this study, and doing an
evaluation of their existence in three (3) different groups of Yellow chicken may help understand
how amino and fatty acids, as well as other parts of the cell,