Summary of Protein and Carbohydrate

Summary of Protein and Carbohydrate
Protein
Proteins are composed of intercoiling strands, in turn composed of amino acids.

• The proteins function to regulate specific steps in metabolism – one step, one protein. Hence, many proteins are needed.

• The variety of protein structures is made possible by the order and arrangement of the amino acid building blocks.

• At any time, body protein is being both synthesized and degraded, an inefficient process which leads to urinary loss of the breakdown products of the amino acid building blocks.

• This loss is obligatory and necessities regular replenishment – hence the nutritional necessity for protein in the diet.

Carbohydrate
Carbohydrate are composed of sugar molecules, single, paired or in long strands. Dietary carbohydrates are predominantly starch, with some sucrose and lactose.

• Starch is digested to glucose units, which are observed to be used for energy or for the synthesis of fats.

• Rising blood glucose levels after a meal stimulates insulin release which disposes of this load. Falling blood glucose levels stimulates glucagon, which maintains a basic minimum level of glucose in the blood.

• Although sucrose is well tolerated, lactose is poorly tolerated by many people who lack the enzyme to digest it. Both these substances yield glucose or glucose-like compounds on digestion.

Summary of Protein and Carbohydrate

The Goals of Modern Food processing

The Goals of Modern Food processing
Formulation
A logical basic sequence of steps to produce an acceptable and quality food product from raw materials.

Easy production procedure
Develop methods that can facilitate the various steps of production.

Time economy
A cohesive plan that combines the science of production and manual labor to reduce the time needed to produce the product.

Consistency
Application of modern science and technology to assure the consistency of each batch of products.

Product and worker safety
The government and the manufacturers work closely to make sure that the product is wholesome for public consumption and the workers work in a safe environment.

Buyer friendliness
Assuming the buyer dislikes the product, the manufacturer must do everything humanly possible to ensure that the product is user friendly (size, cooking instructions, keeping quality, convenience, etc).

Obviously, to achieve all these goals is not a simple matter. The first question is why do we want to process food?

At present, there are many modern reasons why foods are processed, for example, adding value to a food, improving visual appeal and convenience.

However, traditionally the single most important reason we wish to process food is to make last longer without spoiling.

Probably the oldest methods of achieving this goal are the salting of meat and fish, the fermenting of milk and the pickling of vegetable.
The Goals of Modern Food processing

Taste and smell

Taste and smell
Taste and smell, described as our two chemical senses, work together in our perception of the flavor of food.

The process is extremely complex and not completely understood. Neither the tongue nor the nose alone is sufficient to experience flavor; we must have the combination of taste and aroma, as the brain registers signals from the taste buds and mouth and from the olfactory sensory cells at the roof of the nasal passage.

In addition, the sense of touch is inextricably involved in our experience, as we react to the “mouth-feel” of food, determined by its texture and c0nsistency.

The temperature of food, as well as the presence of certain chemicals which we describes as “hot” (as in chilies) or “cool” (as in mints) are also factors.

Piquant foods actually cause a degree of pain, in a way that offends some eaters but excites and pleases others. The look of food before we eat is important, as are the sounds we hear – crunchy, squeaky, slurpy, fizzy, and so on – as we chew and swallow.

And finally a feeling of satisfaction, satiety, or even bloatedness, or the discovery that “it tastes like more,” all contribute to the profound experience of savoring our food.

Moreover, these sensations are modified by our mood at the moment, our state of health, our expectations, nostalgia and the taboos and aversions.

Our sense of smell, while perhaps dull in comparison to most other mammals’, is nonetheless extremely subtle, and we can discriminate among thousands of different scents.

In contrast, the gustatory sense - the perceptions communicated by the taste buds – is usually regarded as rather crude, being limited to just four basic tastes: sweet, sour (or acid), bitter and salty.

This theory is by no means universally accepted, however, some physiologists and some culinary cultures suggest that there are one or more additional basic tastes, variously describe as earthy, metallic, stringent, alkaline (soapy), or spicy (pungent).

It is difficult to specify precisely what is meant by these terms, and some of them may overlap. Our problem is identifying the basic tastes may reflect a physiological fact: Although the question of how many basic tastes there are goes back at least to Aristotle, no one has yet demonstrated that such a thing as a basic taste actually exists.
Taste and smell