Drip losses of meat samples defrosted by either RF or air conventional methods are shown in Fig. 5. In terms of drip loss, no significant (P P 0.05) difference was noted between RF and
conventional tempering for any of the meat types examined. However, the thawing methods as described in Section 2.3 had an effect
on drip loss. Samples thawed by the conventional air method had
significantly higher drip losses (P < 0.05) than samples thawed by
radio frequency at all levels of comminution.
The findings of this study agree with Ambrosiadis et al. (1994),
who found that the greatest drip loss occurred using a slow thawing procedure (incubation at +4 °C) when compared to microwave
thawing for beef M. semitendinosus. They also noted that the most
intense fibre damage was found under slow thawing conditions.
Ngapo et al. (1999) examined the effect of thawing rate on drip loss
of pork meat samples. Thawing times of 12, 60 and 180 min were
used to defrost samples from À7 to À1 °C. A trend of increasing
drip loss with decreasing thawing rate was noted which is broadly
in agreement with the observations of the current study although
it must be noted that the different rates were achieved by a common technology in the study of Ngapo et al.