Questions tagged [food-chemistry]
For questions related to the chemistry of food.
400
questions
-4
votes
1answer
72 views
I mix table salt and baking soda with water to make mouth rinse, and leave them for several days. It started to form precipitation, and a bad odor [closed]
I mixed 2 spoons of baking soda with 1 spoon of salt and mixed them with water (but not mixing totally) and left them for several days. At first I saw some bubble but the water was clear, but then it ...
3
votes
1answer
69 views
Deactivate lectins in beans by baking
Having dried uncooked beans,
I read that the lectins can be deactivated by boiling and soaking for a while. What I could not find any information on is if dry baking beans would eventually deactivate ...
1
vote
0answers
60 views
How do I get calcium citrate to precipitate in experiment on extraction of citric acid from juice?
I was planning to extract citric acid from mango juice by first using Aspergillus niger fungus by fermentation to convert the mango juice to citric acid, then extracting by first adding sodium ...
-4
votes
1answer
48 views
How Bread is made with yeast, sugar and luke warm milk? [closed]
Materials and Apparatus:
wheat flour
sugar
dry yeast
glass bowl
covering plate
milk
Procedure:
Lukewarm milk is taken in the glass bowl and sugar is added to it. Then, yeast is added to the same.
...
7
votes
1answer
304 views
Why do purple Pedialyte freezer pops turn green when frozen?
I bought some Pedialyte freezer pops for my kids:
And I've noticed that after spending a long enough time in the freezer, the purple "grape" pops change color from purple to green:
After ...
0
votes
0answers
24 views
why should we add the fat slowly when making an emulsion?
I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place but recently I realized that every time I got told to make an emulsion even when cooking (ie making mayo or cake batter) it is instructed to add the fat (or ...
-2
votes
1answer
58 views
Why isn't canned food good forever? [closed]
So everything inside the can has been killed and nothing can get in. So why doesn't it last forever then?
-2
votes
1answer
18 views
why did a mixture of water, sugar, starch effervesce after adding a little bit of glycerol as humectant? cooking at 130 degrees celsius [closed]
I am trying a new formulation of lokum (turkish delight) which is a gel composed of starch, water and sugar. After adding 0.5% of glycerol to a 170 Kg of a boiling mixture, it became fugitive and ...
1
vote
2answers
184 views
What is the composition of diet coke?
I've been trying to find the values of any sort of percentage composition of diet coke and I haven't found any luck other than one interviewee (Dr. MAUREEN STOREY [Senior Vice President, Science ...
3
votes
1answer
180 views
Procedure for measuring EC
Most of the procedures on the internet are of a university research lab level. Is there a simpler method I could use to determine the concentration of EGCG
3
votes
0answers
48 views
How to maximize shelf-life of freeze-dried food beyond 25 years? Can this exceed 100 years?
Many manufacturers will sell and advertise emergency preparedness food packs to still taste "great" 25-30 years into the future (or at least maintain a consistent taste over this period). ...
1
vote
0answers
47 views
Understanding the pH scale for edible food!
I'm working on a website where I want to provide the pH level of plants! Although i don't even know what this is (I have zero knowledge in chemistry), I have to provide it! What I want to do is ...
-1
votes
1answer
218 views
Does sour milk have something else in it besides lactic acid that gives it such a horrific taste and odor?
Even slightly sour milk has a horrible, nauseating taste, while plain yogurt tastes either great, or at least nowhere near as bad. A dozen sources (all of them) say that the sour odor and taste of ...
-3
votes
1answer
100 views
Turning oil into solid for candles [closed]
I added stearic acid to hot vegetable oil and saw it turned to a sludgy, slush material in about 1.5 hours. Is there any other natural additive that I can add to make it more solid in the same amount ...
2
votes
0answers
30 views
Is there a known value for the molar extinction (absorption) coefficient for amylose and amylopectin iodine complexes?
I am doing a colorimetry experiment with starch, and have a theoretical model based on Beer's law. To solve it, I need a known value for the molar extinction coefficients of amylose and amylopectin ...
0
votes
0answers
15 views
How reliable would commercially available starch be as a standard for an experiment?
I am conducting a student experiment of finding the amylose to amylopectin ratio of certain samples using an iodine colorimetry method. In order to calculate the actual ratios, I need a standard to ...
3
votes
0answers
48 views
What do we know about the structure of the amylopectin iodine complex?
I am studying a method of finding the ratio between amylose and amylopectin using the difference in color of the amylose-iodine complex(blue) and the amylopectin-iodine complex (red/brown).
Through ...
14
votes
1answer
2k views
Why do green bell peppers become bitter when cooked?
Why do green bell peppers taste sweet raw, but become bitter when cooked (steamed)?
What chemical process is responsible for this? (I don't believe the temperatures are high enough for the Maillard ...
0
votes
0answers
85 views
What does solid matrix mean?
I am reading "Effect of Freeze-Drying on Quality and Grinding
Process of Food Produce": A Review by Timilehin Martins Oyinloye and Won Byong Yoon.
The problem is they are referring to the ...
0
votes
0answers
12 views
Improving protein solubility in Water solvent (food science)?
I am trying to form a solution involving mixing my protein shakes. I am using a vegetable protein and it has poor solubility. Is their another protein I could use to entrap it to improve solubility? ...
0
votes
0answers
37 views
Carcinogenicity of home coated cast iron pans
Cast iron pans are a traditional cooking utensil and are becoming more and more popular in recent years.
I myself switched from Teflon/ PFC pans to cast iron pans.
To use the pan they are normally ...
-1
votes
1answer
26 views
Could shear force from blending denature alpha amylase / glucoamylase enzymes?
I am trying to break down the starches in a certain variety of oats in the most efficient way possible. I have to break the whole oats down after cooking, so they are finer particles for the amylases ...
14
votes
1answer
460 views
What factors promote honey's crystallisation?
Honey is a complex mixture containing, probably, more than hundred compounds.
I understand that the % of those components will affect the crystallisation.
However, I am wondering what factors may ...
2
votes
0answers
37 views
How does iodine react with amylose and amylopectin, and can iodine colorimetry be used to determine the ratio between the two starches?
Based on some of the methods of studying starches in rice I looked at, I found that there are two general distinctions:
ones that focus on the ratio between amylose and amylopectin
ones that focus ...
2
votes
0answers
53 views
Why does sodium citrate in water turn black when blueberries are added?
I recently started making oral rehydration therapy for someone I'm taking care of who developed POTS after COVID-19 infection. (ORT was recommended by their doctor.) I use the standard ingredients of ...
5
votes
1answer
64 views
Can Fe and Ca react and become unusable in some foods?
In Turkish cuisine there is a popular food called "tahin pekmez" (tahini with grape molasses).
According to a 2017 article on some Turkish news site, mixing these is supposedly counter-...
1
vote
0answers
50 views
How to extract limonene from the orange peels?
What is a reasonable procedure to extract the orange essential oil from the rinds? I thought this would be a common experiment.
Here's what Wikipedia had to say, they identify the essential oil as ...
0
votes
0answers
26 views
Carbon Sequestration For Indoor Farming
First the backstory:
We've begun growing mushrooms (currently Enoki, Lion's Mane and Blue Oysters if anyone is curious) for the sake of eating and maybe potentially selling someday soon. My partner ...
-1
votes
4answers
98 views
If I hard boil eggs in a pressure cooker, will I get the same results regardless of altitude?
This seems like it should be obvious but for some reason (my chemistry is very rusty) I'm having a hard time articulating why the hardboiled egg recipe in an instant pot should yield the same results ...
2
votes
4answers
90 views
How to correct the pH and composition of bottled water?
For some time I've been buying a brand 'A' of (non-sparkling) bottled water.
It wasn't easy to find one that I liked, because I make tea with it, and most other brands I tried made murky, smelly, dark ...
27
votes
2answers
3k views
The importance of the cold chain in the food and the pharmaceutical industry
There are these everyday things that one should know as a scientist and especially as a chemist, but which never come to light in an academic curriculum — at least not in mine.
One such thing is the ...
8
votes
0answers
566 views
Does heating potato starch destroy its resistant starch?
Resistant starch, as found in potato starch, is supposed to have health benefits. There are differing opinions on whether or not heating potato starch destroys the resistant starch in it and thereby ...
4
votes
1answer
510 views
Why are there no alkaline foods?
It takes some work to find a list of the actual pH of various foods. (Searches are confounded by a popular "alkaline diet" theory that the pH effect on a human body of consuming various ...
1
vote
0answers
163 views
Does fractionation use enough heat to destroy nutrients in Coconut Oils when seperating the MCT oils?
We have recently been giving MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil to our dogs in place of Coconut Oil as from what I understand the majority of the benefits of Coconut Oil comes from the MCT's ...
7
votes
2answers
2k views
Are food calorie values really integers?
According to what I've seen, fat has a listed caloric value of 9 Cal/g, while carbs and protein have listed caloric values of 4 Cal/g.* Are these numbers exact, or have they been rounded? And if they ...
0
votes
1answer
110 views
What is the main contributor of the color of honey? [closed]
I was told that the color of honey contains so much chemistry and that was interesting to me and after doing a couple of research I found that the color of honey depends on the presence of plant ...
0
votes
1answer
384 views
Are there any tasteless edible salts? [closed]
I saw on Youtube a video where caffeine was extracted from Red Bull using dichloromethane. However, due to dichloromethane tendency to form emulsions with liquid, an inefficient method was used to mix ...
24
votes
4answers
9k views
Can we fill potato chips bags with a gas other than nitrogen?
I understand that we fill potato chips bag with nitrogen to prevent oxidation. But why do we use nitrogen, instead of neon or hydrogen or something else?
My first guess is that nitrogen is lighter ...
0
votes
0answers
42 views
Lowering the freezing point of a lipid by adding another lipid
I'm trying to stop bacon grease from congealing in the fridge by adding another lipid with a lower freeze point to it, but I'm not sure how much to add, as I'd like to keep the ratio as bacon-grease ...
1
vote
1answer
79 views
Chemistry of heat and egg whites
I tried to make Italian buttercream icing the other day and followed this recipe.
Unfortunately, the icing was completely runny / liquid. So I know I made a mistake somewhere.
But since I don't ...
2
votes
1answer
139 views
Chemical composition of silver tarnish
I had taken as a given that silver tarnish is a layer of silver sulfide on the surface of a utensil, and that cleaning it using a thiourea based agent like Tarn-X dissolves the sulfide layer.
However,...
4
votes
2answers
795 views
How to measure the color of honey? [closed]
After doing some research, I found that honey's color could be a factor of climate. I am very interested in this subject and I'm a high school student so we don't have as much apparatus as you would ...
0
votes
1answer
224 views
Ripening of bananas?
So, obviously the ripening of bananas involves changing it’s chemical composition. For example, ripe bananas have a much higher amount of sugar.
It is also known that reaction rates are generally ...
-2
votes
1answer
133 views
Cooking IN CO2 gas? [closed]
Quick theoretical question:
What if I replaced water with dry ice in my pressure cooker? Assuming I used a calculated amount to prevent an explosion...
Would It be able to cook?
Would it dehydrate ...
7
votes
1answer
835 views
Does storing apples alongside potatoes keep potatoes from sprouting?
I am looking for a chemical explanation which I wasn't able to find.
I have read in several sources such as this one that, in order to prevent potatoes from sprouting, it is sufficient to store a few ...
2
votes
1answer
346 views
Why is absorbance in UV-VIS spectrometer negative even after calibration?
I was collecting data to plot a calibration curve using pure beta-carotene sample. Prepared 5 different concentrations of beta-carotene dissolved in methanol. Pure methanol was used as blank. However, ...
3
votes
3answers
1k views
Is there a way to create natural Red food coloring from Turmeric in the house kitchen?
As a non chemist I have read in the Wikipedia article Curcumin that:
Curcumin becomes bright red when it interacts electrostatically with
phospholipid film.
This text appeared without source ...
5
votes
2answers
515 views
Is there any way to chemically check sweetness level in any drink or water or tea etc?
I was wondering if there is a test or way to find out how sweet any drink is? For example, if I mix sugar in water, how can I test its level or number of sweetness?
3
votes
1answer
135 views
How can they "wash away" the caffeine from Nescafe Gold to produce that "de-caf" version?
I buy and drink Nescafe Gold all the time. I also buy the smaller "caffeine-free" version of the same product. It tastes very differently, which makes me assume that the caffeine does have a lot of ...
29
votes
3answers
10k views
What substances do humans consume that are caloric but neither protein, carb, nor fat?
On the Medical Sciences StackExchange site I asked Can a calorie be neither protein, carb, nor fat?
and got a very helpful answer, which was that ethanol (in alcoholic drinks) is caloric but neither ...
