The world's first portable fat meter for meat can tell the difference between lean fatty mince in an instant. Distell Industries, the meter's manufacturer, expects it to be used by everyone from trading standards officers and meat processors to consumer organisations.
The technology could be used to scan joints of meat, but it is usually easy to see how much fat there is in a solid cut, whereas mince is much harder to analyse. Distell, based at Fauldhouse in West Lothian, says that mince can now be checked on the spot, avoiding the usual delays while samples are sent off for chemical analysis of its fat content.
Lean mince contains a higher proportion of water than fatty mince, and the sensor detects this with low-energy microwaves. Water is better than fat at soaking up the microwaves, so the most absorbent samples are also the leanest.
The meter feeds microwaves into ...
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