Since you asked

The Same Difference

The food industry is on a quest to achieve a new level of product consistency.

Story by Lynn Haley •  Illustration by Caroline Hamel

Anyone who has had to wait for someone at an airport knows that people-watching can be a fascinating way to pass the time. A few minutes of passenger-gazing confirms that we humans come in myriad shapes and sizes. Sometimes it’s easy to forget, but the same holds true for plants and animals. The fact is that anything that originates from nature has unique qualities – attributes that present an interesting challenge for the food industry in terms of consistency.

Think about the last time you bought a package of chicken breasts. Was each piece in the package the same size? Did it taste the same? Maybe one of the chicken breasts was smaller and took less time to cook than the others. Perhaps your dinnermates quibbled over who should get the biggest piece.

These are some of the issues driving the food industry’s quest to create products that offer a reliable taste and cooking experience each and every time.

To understand the concept of food product consistency, look no further than the fast food industry – they’ve built empires on the “sameness” principle. Whether you order your favourite combo in Alberta or Argentina, what lands on the tray should be something that you recognize instantly.

On the home front, local researchers such as Dr. Doug Korver, an associate professor in poultry nutrition at the University of Alberta, are taking up the consistency challenge. 

Korver and his team of poultry specialists are on a mission to find out what makes one bird more muscled or bigger than another. “Chickens, like all animals, are products of nature, and while certain breeds do share similar characteristics, each animal is distinctly unique,” he points out. “Even birds with the same body weight or genetics can vary when it comes to the amount of muscle they carry, and in turn, that impacts the thickness and size of the chicken breast.” 

Why is consistency so important to the foodservice industry? Derek Dale, executive chef at the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede thinks consistency can be the difference between a memorable meal and a culinary crisis. When he’s cooking chicken breasts, he’s doing 1,000 of them at one time.

“I need to know that every portion is identical in weight because we’re going to orchestrate our entire cooking, plating and serving schedule to have that entrée baked for optimal food safety and flavour,” he says. “I simply won’t risk serving a guest a burnt, or worse yet, an underdone piece of chicken.”

So what can Korver and his team do to keep chefs like Dale and everyday cooks like you and I from getting our feathers ruffled?

“We’re learning that a number of factors impact the size and uniformity of products like chicken breasts,” he comments. “For instance, the age and breed of the parent flock, feeding regimes, and even the temperature of the barn have an impact on the growth and development of chicks.”

The consistency factor is not unique to poultry – it transcends everything from apples to pork chops, eggs to milk and butter to bread and it finds common ground on some surprising basics. What’s put into an animal or a crop, how it is raised or managed, and how it is processed and packaged has a lot to do with the consistency of the product that lands on our dinner table.

In the pork business, it’s a huge priority. Like chickens, different breeds yield different weights, finishing sizes (the net weight of the animal used for meat) and textures. The way hogs are fed, the environments they’re housed in and the standard of animal care they experience has a significant effect on the quality and uniformity of the meat they produce. In fact, it is so important that Alberta pork producers signed onto an industry- wide Quality Assurance Program in 1998 to produce pork products that are consistent in weight, product quality and appearance.

What about packaged products like canned soups, pre-mixed pasta or bakery items? Food companies invest significant time and money developing recipe formulas that consistently deliver the flavours, textures and aromas that we want. It is not unusual for a processed food product to take at least five years in the development phase. Then, when all is said and done, label approval is only granted if the product lives up to stated expectations in repeated tests.

It’s much the same story for produce. For example, did you know that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research stations spend years developing apple varieties that consistently yield crunchy or soft textures when you bite into them?

Some things are harder than others to gauge in terms of consistency. Take eggs for instance. Surely a darker yolk is an indication of superior quality. Another myth scrambled. When they’re cracked up, eggs of a different colour are identical nutrition-wise.

“The colour of the yolk tells you what the hen was fed. If it’s dark yellow, she was eating corn (the norm in Eastern Canada). If the yolk is a lemon yellow, she was probably fed a western Canadian blend of wheat and barley,” says Brenda White, marketing and communications manager of Alberta Egg Producers. “Regardless, the quality and quantity of feed is tightly controlled and managed by producers who adhere to on-farm quality programs.”

Similarly, milk moos the same tune. What you pour in your glass may be anything from skim to whole milk, but that powerful blend of essential nutrients is identical other than the fat and caloric content. What keeps it that way is the feed  given to the cow.