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Category
Food chemistry
Summary
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, 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 apples using lemon juice or other acidulated water.
The scientific approach to food and nutrition arose with attention to agricultural chemistry in the works of J. G. Wallerius, Humphry Davy, and others. For example, Davy published Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, in a Course of Lectures for the Board of Agriculture (1813) in the United Kingdom which would serve as a foundation for the profession worldwide, going into a fifth edition. Earlier work included that by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who isolated malic acid from apples in 1785.
Some of the findings of Liebig on food chemistry were translated and published by Eben Horsford in Lowell Massachusetts in 1848.
In 1874 the Society of Public Analysts was formed, with the aim of applying analytical methods to the benefit of the public. Its early experiments were based on bread, milk and wine.
It was also out of concern for the quality of the food supply, mainly food adulteration and contamination issues that would first stem from intentional contamination to later with chemical food additives by the 1950s. The development of colleges and universities worldwide, most notably in the United States, would expand food chemistry as well with research of the dietary substances, most notably the Single-grain experiment during 1907-11.
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