Meat
Water retention is an important property of most meat products. Edible gelatin firmly "locks in" free moisture so that little water is lost during heating, sterilization, shearing, and other processing steps.
Meat with poor water retention has a coarse texture, slices poorly, and gives a lower product yield. Adding substances with a strong affinity for water can increase the meat's water-holding capacity. Common ingredients added to meat products include starch and soy protein: starch absorbs water at a ratio of 1:2 and soy protein at 1:4, while edible gelatin can absorb dozens of times its own weight in water. This is because the molecular structure of edible gelatin contains strongly ionic groups that form additional hydrogen bonds with free water. At the same time, edible gelatin reacts with proteins to form a strong three-dimensional structure — a gel — that firmly locks in moisture.
