Importance Of Food Chemistry

FOOD CHEMISTR

Food science deals with the physical, chemical, and biological properties of foods as they relate to stability, cost, quality, processing, safety, nutritive value, wholesomeness, and convenience. Food science is an interdisciplinary branch of biological science involving subjects like microbiology, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Food chemistry, a major aspect of food science, it deals with the composition and properties of food and the chemical changes food undergoes during handling, processing, and storage. Food chemistry is intimately related to chemistry, biochemistry, physiological chemistry, botany, zoology, and molecular biology.

The food chemist relies heavily on knowledge of the aforementioned sciences to effectively

On the contrary, food chemists are concerned primarily with biological substances that are dead or dying (postharvest physiology of plants and post-mortem physiology of muscle) and changes they undergo when exposed to a wide range of environmental conditions. For example sustaining residual life processes are of concern to food chemists during the marketing of fresh fruits and vegetables, whereas conditions incompatible with life processes are of major interest when long-term preservation of food is attempted. In addition, food chemists are concerned with the chemical properties of disrupted food tissues (flour, fruit and vegetable juices, isolated and modified constituents, and manufactured foods), single-cell sources of food (eggs and microorganisms), and one major biological fluid, milk. In summary, food chemists have much in common with biological scientists, yet they also have interests that are distinctly different and are of the utmost importance to society.

The scientific approach to food and nutrition started with attention to agricultural chemistry found in the works of J. G. Wallerius, Humphry Davy, and others. Based in the UK, Davy published ‘Elements of Agricultural Chemistry’, in a Course of Lectures for the Board of Agriculture (1813) which would serve as

Proteins play a central role in biological systems. Although the information for evolution and biological organization of cells is contained in DNA, enzymes exclusively perform the chemical and biochemical processes that sustain the life of a cell/organism. Thousands of enzymes have been discovered. Each one of them catalyzes a highly specific biological reaction in cells. In addition to functioning as enzymes, proteins (such as collagen, keratin, elastin, etc.) also function as structural components of cells and complex organisms. The functional diversity of proteins essentially arises from their chemical