• Question: what inspired you to be a meat scientist?????????

    Asked by lio to Gonzalo on 6 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by nikhil.
    • Photo: Gonzalo Delgado-Pando

      Gonzalo Delgado-Pando answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      To tell you the truth I did not start in meat science because I was inspired on anything. But I was inspired to be a food scientist. I have always liked chemistry and I actually studied three years of chemistry degree. After my second year I already knew I wanted to be a food scientist, I had a subject about food chemistry and I loved it.
      I became a meat scientist when I started my PhD because it was about meat products, since then I have been studying and researching a lot about meat and I must confess I like being a meat scientist. I think is one of the most important foods in many countries so it is an important field to be working on.

Comments

  • Photo: Yvonne

    Yvonne commented on :

    I’m not a meat scientist-however my research is based on meat! Meat is an important part of the Irish diet-and diets in many other countries so I am interested if eating beef from cows who just ate grass is better than beef from cows fed grain..

    • Photo: Gonzalo

      Gonzalo commented on :

      There are many things to consider. But in these days I think the most important one is the environmental side (sustainability). From this point of view grass-fed cows are better: they produce less greenhouse effect gases and no extra energy has been used to feed them. They just eat the grass that is already there. Because if you feed them with grain you are using more energy to feed the cow because you employ more energy and resources in growing the grain (water, machinery) and then in processing it and transporting it to the cow.

      If you are asking if the meat is going to be healthier or not there are no strong evidence to support any of them. The type of feed impacts on the meat composition but there is no evidence that these changes will affect human health. Even though grass-fed cows might have more healthier components, meat is eaten as a whole so there is a need for human studies checking if this changes in composition really affect human health.