New York - Diced cherries can do more than flavor to fruitcakes -- tart cherries retard spoilage of ground beef and reduce the formation of potentially carcinogenic compounds in hamburgers during cooking, report US researchers.
The researchers, Dr. Caroline Britt and colleagues at Michigan State University in East Lansing, compared regular burgers with those made from a mixture that was about one-eighth diced, tart cherry. They report their findings in the current issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
The study showed that hamburgers containing cherries were slower to spoil during refrigerated storage. This is thought to be due to antioxidant effects of compounds in cherries.
The research team also found that compared with pure ground beef, cherry hamburgers had about 70% lower levels of heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs), carcinogens that form when meat is cooked.
“The reduction in HAA concentrations in the cherries patties was due in part to dilution as the patties contained 11.5% cherry,” they write. “However, the major inhibitory effect of cherry tissue is clearly due to cherry components functioning as inhibitors of the reaction(s) leading to HAA formation. It remains to be established which cherry compounds contribute to this inhibitory effect, although it is anticipated that compounds with antioxidant activity are involved.”
In accordance with the results of previous studies, the cooked cherry burgers were juicier and lower in fat than the beef-only burgers, Britt and colleagues report. After 4 days in a refrigerator, they also contained less than half as much oxidized cholesterol as the plain burgers. Findings from previous research suggest that oxidized cholesterol is more harmful than regular cholesterol.
According to a statement issued by the university, cherry burgers are now on school lunch menus in 16 states -- Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia.
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