Meat and fish measures program

Background

In July 2011, FSANZ undertook a small program to estimate the average weights for a range of cuts of fresh meat and fish likely to be consumed during the 2011-13 Australian Health Survey (AHS). This initial work was expanded throughout the course of the survey.  

Sampling

A range of commonly consumed meats (including beef, veal, lamb, pork and chicken) and fish (including salmon, trout, snapper, frozen crumbed/battered varieties, etc.) were selected for analysis in the initial program. Samples were weighed in-store at seven supermarkets and one independent grocer in the Canberra area at two separate occasions. Samples were then allocated to size categories based on weight.

Throughout 2012-13, FSANZ developed additional measures for pieces of meat and fish to validate and build on the initial program. Samples were weighed both in-store and at home.

More than 950 meat and fish samples were weighed during this program.

Results

As demonstrated in Table 1, the majority of meats sold as fillets, chops or steaks were assumed to be a single adult serve size (either small, medium or large), for example a medium steak weighed an average of 195 g, as purchased. However, some cuts such as beef rump steak weighed up to 789 g per steak as purchased. These cuts were assumed to be multiple portions when allocating weights to size groups for calculation.

Excluding cuts which may be divided into more than one serve, beef chuck steak showed the highest variability across all size categories with steaks ranging from 176 g to 552 g from 42 samples. The cut with the smallest range was lamb Frenched cutlet with 38 samples weighing from 35 g to 89 g.

Chicken breast showed the highest variability of all chicken cuts. Thigh, drumstick and wing all had a range of approximately 100 g from the smallest sample to the largest, while breast fillets had a range of over 300 g. Seafood fillet sizes were also quite variable with frozen crumbed fillets ranging from 45 g to 200 g and salmon fillets ranging from 71 g to 182 g.

For the complete set of results generated from this program refer to Attachment 1.

Updates to the measures database

FSANZ used the data for meat and fish in this program to assign a food specific portion to three sizes for each of these foods in the food measures database, based on observation.

Some values gathered later in the program may not have been included in the derivation of the final measure if they supported existing data and their inclusion would not have had a noticeable impact on the average.

Measures were gathered for foods in their “as purchased” state. For foods which include inedible portions such as bone or gristle, the final measure was adjusted based on existing gross composition data before being entered into the database as an “untrimmed” version. For example, lamb Frenched cutlet has 70.8% edible portion (lean meat and fat) and 29.2% inedible portion (bone and gristle). With an average weight for a medium cutlet of 55 g, as purchased, the final value in the measures database was calculated as follows:

1 lamb Frenched cutlet (medium, untrimmed) = 55 g x 0.708 = 39 g

Gross composition data was also used in the same way to adjust the measures for “semi-trimmed” and “fully-trimmed” varieties, where required.

The majority of measures for cooked meats in the measures database were derived using the raw weights from this program multiplied by the weight change factor for different cooking methods.

Conclusion

The results of the meat and fish measures program have given FSANZ an improved level of confidence about the quality of measures assigned to these foods reported during the 2011-13 AHS.