## 3 Results and Discussion  
### Cooking Loss  
The cooking losses of the meat samples subjected to sous vide cooking were in the range 18.16-36.66%, and they increased significantly with temperature and cooking time (\(p\) < 0.001; Table 1).  
The interaction of temperature and cooking time also showed a significant effect (\(p\) < 0.05) on cooking losses. Our results confirmed the observations of other authors [3, 9, 18, 33]. [PERSON] et al. [11] noted a significant effect of temperature on cooking loss of pork and beef and a significant effect of temperature and time of processing on cooking loss of chicken. Different effects of temperature and time on the cooking loss of pork loin were observed by [PERSON] et al. [34]. Cooking losses tended to be higher when higher temperatures were applied, However, longer cooking time at 50 \({}^{\circ}\)C resulted in lower cooking loss, while at higher temperatures the cooking time effect was not significant.  
Cooking loss is caused mainly by water loss during cooking, together with other meat components such as myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic proteins, collagen, lipids, vitamins, minerals and flavour compounds [35, 36]. Most of the water is held in muscles within structures of myofibrillar proteins which undergo denaturation and shrinkage during heating, followed by water liberation and loss from meat [18, 33, 37, 38]. The intensity of these processes increases with increasing temperature up to 90 \({}^{\circ}\)C. Collagen denaturation and subsequent shrinkage occur between 53 and 63 \({}^{\circ}\)C and between 60 and 70 \({}^{\circ}\)C, respectively. Further heating causes collagen solubilization and gelatine formation which also influence water loss from meat [7, 9, 37, 39]. As the temperatures applied in our study were in the range 60-75 \({}^{\circ}\)C, the above changes can explain our observations.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Sample**} & **Cooking Loss (\%)** & **Moisture Content (\%)** & **Water Activity (-)** & **pH (-)** \\ \hline Raw pork loin & nd & 72.45 \(\pm\) 0.34  & 0.993 \(\pm\) 0.001  & 5.78 \(\pm\) 0.01  \\ \hline
60 \({}^{\circ}\)C & & & & \\  & 2 h & 18.16 \(\pm\) 1.07  & 68.91 \(\pm\) 0.28  & 0.995 \(\pm\) 0.003  & 5.80 \(\pm\) 0.37  \\  & 3 h & 21.13 \(\pm\) 1.12  & 67.54 \(\pm\) 0.58  & 0.993 \(\pm\) 0.002  & 5.81 \(\pm\) 0.10  \\  & 4 h & 22.46 \(\pm\) 1.05  & 67.50 \(\pm\) 0.41  & 0.991 \(\pm\) 0.004  & 5.80 \(\pm\) 0.10  \\ \hline
65 \({}^{\circ}\)C & & & & \\  & 2 h & 19.55 \(\pm\) 0.46  & 68.16 \(\pm\) 0.20  & 0.993 \(\pm\) 0.002  & 5.81 \(\pm\) 0.22  \\  & 3 h & 24.41 \(\pm\) 0.54  & 66.90 \(\pm\) 0.11  & 0.993 \(\pm\) 0.002  & 5.82 \(\pm\) 0.11  \\  & 4 h & 29.64 \(\pm\) 0.74  & 66.31 \(\pm\) 0.14  & 0.994 \(\pm\) 0.001  & 5.80 \(\pm\) 0.07  \\ \hline
70 \({}^{\circ}\)C & & & & \\  & 1 h & 25.21 \(\pm\) 1.52  & 65.91 \(\pm\) 0.37  & 0.993 \(\pm\) 0.003  & 5.84 \(\pm\) 0.17  \\  & 1.5 h & 28.79 \(\pm\) 0.46  & 64.00 \(\pm\) 0.28  & 0.994 \(\pm\) 0.001  & 5.86 \(\pm\) 0.02  \\  & 2 h & 30.58 \(\pm\) 0.43  & 65.27 \(\pm\) 0.34  & 0.995 \(\pm\) 0.002  & 5.85 \(\pm\) 0.14  \\ \hline
75\({}^{\circ}\)C & & & & \\  & 1 h & 29.05 \(\pm\) 1.06  & 64.90 \(\pm\) 0.29  & 0.994 \(\pm\) 0.002  & 5.88 \(\pm\) 0.09  \\  & 1.5 h & 31.61 \(\pm\) 0.54  & 63.24 \(\pm\) 0.53  & 0.994 \(\pm\) 0.003  & 5.90 \(\pm\) 0.03  \\  & 2 h & 36.66 \(\pm\) 0.63  & 62.32 \(\pm\) 0.70  & 0.994 \(\pm\) 0.001  & 5.91 \(\pm\) 0.01  \\ \hline \hline \multicolumn{2}{c}{Level of significance} & & & & \\ \multicolumn{2}{c}{Temperature} & *** & *** & NS & NS \\ \multicol