286. True Meat Extract

In order to judge intelligently the commercial meat extracts as they actually are, we should first consider what a real meat extract is. The manufacture of these preparations was greatly promoted by Baron von Liebig's researches on the chemistry of meat, although something similar had been used for many years before. The original Liebig method of making the extract is to treat finely chopped beef with eight times its weight of cold water, thus dissolving only a very small part of the beef, the substances taken into solution being ash compounds, chiefly potassium phosphate, some albumin and the extractive creatin and its anhydride creatinin. The liquid, after being strained from the beef, is heated sufficiently to coagulate the albumin, this coagulum is filtered off, and the remaining extract, containing the ash compounds and extractives, is evaporated to a paste. While popularly regarded as such, this preparation can hardly be considered as a food, for, as previously stated, the beef extractives creatin and creatinin furnish to the body neither constructive material nor energy, but are largely eliminated in the urine unchanged (see p. 61). These bodies impart a flavor to cooked beef, and besides have the important function of vigorously exciting the secretion of gastric juice (see Chap. V, p. 100). One author (Hutchinson) truly says of them that, "They are thus eminently calculated to rouse appetite and aid the digestion of any food with which they may be taken. This, indeed, is their true function both in health and disease. They are flavoring agents, and their proper place is in the kitchen and not by the bedside."1

287. Commercial Meat Extracts

The foregoing are the specifications of a true beef extract as defined by Liebig. It is interesting to note what is the real character of the extracts now in the market, for which surprising claims are made. In 1908, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station1 made an exhaustive examination of twenty-two brands of meat extracts, twenty-three brands of fluid and semi-fluid preparations, and four brands of meat juices. Of these 47 preparations 10 were found to be properly branded and up to the standards, 17 were found to be misbranded and varying from the standards, and the others were, in general, not up to the standards, though not misbranded. The standards with which the preparations were compared are those based on analyses of genuine beef extracts. The misbranding consisted in such misleading or false statements as the following: "no foreign matter," "absolutely unadulterated," when a large quantity of salt had been added, " the nutritious portion of beef in concentrated form," "a concentrated food that represents the nourishing constituents of fresh beef," "all that is nourishing, sustaining and palatable in fresh beef," "a combination of all the strengthening and stimulating properties of prime lean beef," " the most perfect form of concentrated food known," " pure essence" of beef, statements that deceive the uninformed, because these materials are not concentrated foods and can by no possibility contain more than a very small part of the nutriment of beef. There is no such thing as concentrating the nutritive constituents of beef, except by drying out the water, for practically all the dry matter of clear lean beef is digested, and all of it is nutritious. When beef extract is made, the major portion of the beef, indeed, nearly all its nutritive value, is rejected. Attention should be called to the very high cost of the dry organic matter in these extracts. It was found that the 22 meat extracts contained from 14.8 to 40.4 per cent of water, from 17.6 to 35 per cent of ash, largely common salt, and 37.3 to 67.6 per cent of organic matter. The prices of packages varyingin weight from 1.4 to 3.4 ounces ranged from 15 to 50 cents. The least cost per pound of dry matter was $1, and the greatest $5.70, the dry organic matter costing from $2.68 to $10.18 per pound. Beef tea and beef juice made at home are as good as or better than these preparations, and cost greatly less. The trade in some of these extracts is a fraud on the consumer.

1 " Food and Dietetics," Hutchinson, p. 93.

1 Rep., 1908, pp. 606-664.