Gen: Turkey meat white & dark

[Jody Gerlock <Jody_Gerlock@pds.k12.nj.us>]

Folks,
I spent the morning going through over 240 messages (we were off for 5 days,
so they piled up!), and I was deleting pretty quickly, but I remember someone
asking about why turkey has white and dark meat. I just got a hysterical new
book called, _The physics of Christmas: from the aerodynamics of reindeer to
the thermodynamics of turkey_ (approaches the holiday from a scientific
viewpoint), and here's what it says about this:

        "The color of turkey meat holds a record of the bird's lifestyle. The
difference between the white and dark meat is not due to its blood, or the
red oxygen-carrying hemoglobin, but to the closely related oxygen-storing
myoglobin, a molecule that also contains an iron atom at its heart. Myoglobin
retains and stores the oxygen brought by blood until muscle cells need it.
.....
        Two general classes of muscle fibers are at work during exercise: fast and
slow. Fast, or white muscle fibers are used for rapid motion and rely on
blood for their energy. Slow, or red, muscle fibers are used for more
sustained motion, fueled by stores of fat. And that is where the red,
oxygenated myoglobin comes in. The fast fibers are white because they do not
need this red oxygen-storage muscle.
        Turkeys do a great deal of standing around but little if any flying, so
their breast muscle is white and their legs are dark. Leg meat is also
greasier than breast meat because fat is required to fuel the red muscle
fibers. By contrast, game birds spend more time on the wing, and their breast
meat may be as dark as their drumsticks, seasoned with myoglobin throughout."


This book even tells why Rudolph's nose is red!! (a parasitic infection)
What fun!
Jody
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Jody Gerlock, Librarian, Upper School        phone (609) 924-6700 ext. 241
Princeton Day School                                    fax (609) 924-7278
P.O. Box 75, The Great Road              email: Jody_Gerlock@pds.k12.nj.us
Princeton, NJ 08542
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