Organic+Chemistry+and+the+Food+Industries

Food industries:

Food chemistry is the study of chemical processes and interactions of all biological and non-biological components of foods. The biological substances include such items as meat, poultry , lettuce , beer , and milk as examples. It is similar to biochemistry in its main components such as carbohydrates, lipids , and protein , but it also includes areas such as water , vitamins , minerals , enzymes , food additives , flavors , and colors. This discipline also encompasses how products change under certain food processing techniques and ways either to enhance or to prevent them from happening. An example of enhancing a process would be to encourage fermentation of dairy products with microorganisms that convert lactose to lactic acid ; an example of preventing a process would be stopping the browning on the surface of freshly cut Red Delicious apples using lemon juice or other acidulated water.

One of the uses is the use of Carbohydrates in foods, Comprising 75% of the biological world and 80% of all food intake for human consumption, the most common known human carbohydrate is starch. The simplest version of a carbohydrate is a monosaccharide which possesses the properties of carbon, hydrogen , and oxygen in a 1:2:1 ratio under a general formula of CnH2nOn where n is a minimum of 3. Glucose is an example of a monosaccharide as is fructose. Combine them in the picture shown to the right and you have sucrose, one of the more common sugar products around. 