3.3. Physicochemical properties
3.3.1. Surface-color values
When purchasing meat, consumers use meat color as an indicator
of the freshness and the quality of meat (Joo and Kim, 2011).
More importantly, this appearance of meat affects consumers'
meat-purchasing decision more than any other trait related to meat
quality (Mancini and Hunt, 2005). Thus, the changes in the surfacecolor
values of the pork-butt and beef-loin samples treated for
various times with the flexible thin-layer DBD plasma were
measured (Table 2). The results showed that after DBD-plasma
treatment, L* values of pork and beef samples and the b* value of
pork samples were not significantly different from those of the
untreated samples (P > 0.05). Similarly, Fr€ohling et al. (2012)
determined that the L* value of porcine longissimus dorsi muscle
was not strongly affected by indirect plasma treatment. By contrast,
L* values of pork loin decreased substantially following treatment
with DBD plasma in a recent study by Kim et al. (2013). However,
this reduction was only detected when the plasma was produced
using helium gas but not using a mixture of helium and oxygen