Archive for category Food Science
Can chefs and cooks be food scientists?
Posted by bogart in Food Science on February 15, 2010
A Food Scientist
Typically, it’s people trained in Food Science who are responsible for supplying the abundance of safe and nutritious foods found on the store shelves. Food Scientists are the people who make sure our food supply is safe, convenient, and long-lasting, yet still as nutritious as possible.
Food Science is an applied field, where numerous disciplines like chemistry, physics, engineering, biochemistry, microbiology, and even psychology are applied to the production and preservation of foods. In contrast to cooks and chefs, whose main interests are in the kitchen, Food Scientists are concerned with the large-scale production of high-quality nutritious foods that are safe for consumption, particularly after extended times of storage.
The taste of food
Posted by davincicook in Food Science on June 17, 2009
Taste of Food
The taste of a food is a combination of five major tastes—salt, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. It is complex and hard to describe completely. Sweet and salt tastes are detected primarily on the tip of the tongue, and so they are detected quickly, whereas bitter tastes are detected mainly by taste buds at the back of the tongue. It takes longer to perceive a bitter taste and it lingers in the mouth; thus, bitter foods are often described as having an aftertaste. Sour tastes are mainly detected by the taste buds along the side of the tongue.
Sugars, alcohols, aldehydes, and certain amino acids taste sweet to varying degrees. Acids (such as vinegar, lemon juice, and the many organic acids present in fruits) contribute the sour taste, saltiness is due to salts, including sodium chloride, and bitter tastes are due to alkaloids such as caffeine, theobromine, quinine, and other bitter compounds.
Umami is a taste that recently has been added to the other four. It is a savory taste given by ingredients such as monosodium glutamate (MSG) and other flavor enhancers. The umami taste is significant in Japanese foods and in snack foods such as taco-flavored chips.