Formation of protein-bound Nε-carboxymethyllysine and Nε- carboxyethyllysine in ground pork during commercial sterilization as affected by the type and concentration of sugars

This research was aimed to investigate the formation of protein-bound N-epsilon-carboxymethyllysine (CML) and N-epsilon-carboxyethyllysine (CEL) in ground pork at 121 degrees C (5-30 min) as affected by sugars (1-9% w/w, glucose, fructose, lactose, and sucrose).The addition of reducing sugar significantly (P < 0.05) increased the levels of CML and CEL in heat treated pork samples. Even adding 1% of glucose in pork could lead to 3.8 and 4.0 times increase in the formation rate constant (zero-order) of CML and CEL, respectively. In a typical commercial sterilization process (121 degrees C, 30 min), adding glucose, fructose or lactose in pork resulted in an average increase of 224-581%, 26-276%, and 8-189% CML, and 217-720%, 213%-15.8 times, and 20-150% CEL, respectively, depending on the sugar concentration. Sucrose did not promote the formation of CML and CEL in pork during heating.

Automated summary

The addition of reducing sugars significantly increased the formation of CML and CEL in heat treated pork, especially glucose which could lead to a significant increase even at low concentrations. On the other hand, sucrose did not promote the formation of CML and CEL during the heating process.