History and discovery of glucose

A sugar industry existed around the shores of the Mediterranean between A.D. 700-1600. It was founded as part of the Arab agricultural revolution. The first reference of glucose was “grape sugar” in Moorish writing 1100 AD. The Moors introduced sugar to Europe for the first time by bringing sugarcane from the Nile valley. It grew particularly well along the Mediterranean coast and especially in the Málaga area of al-Andalus.

The sweetness of sugarbeets was recorded in 1590 AD. In 1600, the French agronomist Olivier de Serres noted that ‘‘The beet on being cooked yields a syrup which is beautiful to look at on account of its vermillion color’’.

Glucose, a ubiquitous carbon source preferred by most cells, was first identified by German pharmacist, Andreas Marggraf in 1747. In that year he used alcohol to isolated sucrose from sugar beets, arguably his most influential discovery, as it has revolutionized the modern sugar industry with the process, he used to extract such sugar. He identified the sugar beet’s dried, crystallized juice as identical with cane sugar by the use of a microscope.

In the same year, he experimented with raisins to extract glucose. Raisins are comprised of many molecules, including many sugars like sucrose, fructose, and glucose.

The name glucose was coined in 1838 by French chemist Jean Dumas, from the Greek word gleucos, which means ‘sweet’ or ‘sugar,’ and the structure was discovered by Emil Fischer around the turn of the century.

In 1884, Emil Fischer synthesized some of the known sugars such as fructose and glucose, and he identified 16 stereoisomeric forms of glucose.
History and discovery of glucose

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938 would provide for the establishment of 3 kinds of food standards
*Standard of identity
*Standards of quality
*Standards regulating the fill in container

In 1933, Rexford G. Tugwell, with help of Professors Milton Handler of Columbia and David Cavers of Duke, drafted new regulation. The bill greatly expanded government control over the drug and food processing industry.

A major push for the enactment of the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 was the sulfanilamide elixir tragedy of 1937, which caused 107 deaths. Sulfanilamide was one of the first of the miracle anti-infective sulfa drugs marketed, but a manufacturer mistakenly used diethylene glycol as an agent in its preparation of sulfanilamide elixir.

The incident made the limits of the 1906 law quite clear. Because there were provision against dangerous drugs, the FDA could move only on the technically of misbranding. The new law required that no new drug could be marketed until proven safe for use when used according to directions on the label.

Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938 simply eliminated the ‘distinctive name proviso’ and required instead that the label of a food ‘bear its common or usual name’.

The food would be illegal (misbranded under the law) if ti represented itself as a standardized food unless it conformed to that standard.
Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act 1938

Smoking of fish

Smoking is often used to preserves and flavor meat, fish, and cheese, etc.  It is likely the practice of smoking meat and fish outdates the art of cooking in containers, as open-fire contact (roasting) with food must have been the earliest form of cooking even before earthen ware pots were made.

The importance of wood as fuel, with wood smoke as an integral part of that and perhaps later its utilization in food processing is tied to the same aspect of civilization.

At a dig in Bishkupin, Poland, scientists discovered a fish scales and bones of bass, bream, catfish, pike and roach showed the site to be an eight or tenth century fish smoking plant, which prepared large catches from Biskupin Lake for a large population.

Smoking foods is one of the most ancient food preservation process and in some communities one of the most important. Native Americans of the East Coats and Caribbean preserved fish and haunches of venison by stretching them over cane or wooden racks above a slow, fragrant fire of grass, herbs and mesquite or hardwood.

When Spanish expeditioner Hernando De Soto reached Tampa Bay, Florida, he studied the Timucua method of building strong wood scaffolds over the fore for the roasting of deer, dog, alligators, fish and snake.

Fish could easily be smoked. Before the invention of the chimney, houses normally had thick smoke above head level, slowly finding its way to the smoke hole. Hanging gutted fish on the rafters lightly preserved it by drying and partially cooking it.

More modern methods of smoking fish us formulation of liquid smoke to provide flavor and a range of methods of drying to reduce water activity on the surface. Most drying methods use heat to change the relative humidity of the air passing over the fish.
Smoking of fish

Concord grapes

The Concord grapes is a robust grape cultivated from ancestral native species or a derivatives of a wild Vitis labrusca grape that could withstand the harsh New England weather. Concord grapes were first developed near Concord, Massachusetts by Ephraim Wales Bull in 1849.

It grew from a seed planted in 1843, which bore fruit in 1849. Prior to the appearance of the Concord, grape growing in Eastern American had limited success.

The only sugars are found in Concord grapes are glucose, fructose and sucrose, and the major nonvolatile acids found were tartaric and malic.

The Concord grape variety is chiefly used for the manufacture of grape juice. Approximately 96% of the juice made in New York state is prepared from Concord Grapes. Natural acidity, color and aroma of fresh grape berries provide quality in single strength Concord grape juice. Acidity above 0.85% results in juice that is too tart.

Hot pressing of the grapes is important to extract anthocyanin pigments, flavor components, amino acids, organic acids, sugars, minerals, tannins, and other ingredients.
Concord grapes 

United States Food and Drug Administration

In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed. The act prohibited the sale of misbranded and adulterated foods, drinks and drugs across state lines.

In addition, the act created the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture that became responsible for enforcing the provisions of the act. In 1930 the Bureau of Chemistry was renamed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Since 1906, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its predecessor agencies have regulated foods, among other products. Today the agency has oversight of approximately 80 percent of the US food supply.

The FDA is responsible for protecting the public heath by assuring the safety efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, nation’s food supply, cosmetics and products that emit radiation.

The jurisdiction of the FDA extends to safety and security of the nation’s food supply as well. The FDA makes its own regulations for the efficient enforcement of federal food laws.

In addition to regulations, the FDA also makes general statements of policy, guidelines, advisory opinions and recommendation. As a result of the comprehensive regularity power, the FDA has a wide-range influence on American food.
United States Food and Drug Administration

What is pizza?

Pizza was made with simple, all natural and healthy ingredients. Pizza was the perfect meal, providing a reasonable serving form all four food groups in one hand.

The earliest forms of pizza evolved from flat, unleavened bread cooked in mud ovens and topped with olive oil and native spices. An ancient food traces have been found during archeological digs in brick oven in Pompeii and Egypt-civilizations from over 279 years ago.

Traditional pizzas of Italy rely on the wonderful Mediterranean ingredients that are so plentiful – sun-ripened, tomatoes, golden olive oil, fresh herbs and cheeses are the most well known.

Pizza now has risen to become a sophisticated way to eat a wealth of delicious ingredients with exotic shellfish, oriental vegetables and spices. New York City is the home to the first pizzeria in America. The founding fathers of pizza were Italian immigrants but the ingredients they found in their new country differed from those they know in Naples.

In the past century pizza accompanied Italian migrants and now travels with professional pizza chefs. Pizza that used to be consumed by a migrant poor at home or during lunch breaks at work is now the food of everyone and consumed in a proper pizzeria.
What is pizza?

English muffins

In the middle of the nineteenth century, English muffins were always made at home. English muffins are flat, circular breads about on inch high, usually made from flour, milk butter and yeast and they are often dusted with cornmeal.

The muffins are cooked on a griddle, sometimes with special English muffin rings. English muffins are toasted and can be served with butter, jams, and jellies or used as a sandwich.

English muffins arrived in the United States via Samuel Bath Thomas, and Englishman who brought over his mother’s recipe in 1880. He opened a bakery called the Muffin House in New York and began manufacturing English muffins.

Fast food restaurants popularized English muffins for breakfast with McDonald’s Egg Muffin (1972) and Burger King’s Breakfast Muffin (2010).

English muffins are six times lower in fat than croissants and half as a fatty as biscuits.
English muffins

What is falafel?

Falafel was invented by Egyptian Bedouins, made from chickpeas, fava beans or a combination of the two and usually deep fried. It first appeared on culinary scene as street food –exotic, portable and loaded with high flavor food.

Falafel is traditional eaten whole, dipped in either tahini or hummus or wrapped in pita.

It was first invented in Alexandria, Egypt, some say by the Coptic people as a replacement for meat during Lent.

Since Alexandria is a port, sailors from all over took the delicious little patties home, and eventually falafel became a popular fast food all over the Middle East and now around the world.

The first known record of the word in an American source was in December 16, 1949 issue of The Jewish Criterion. It said “Falafel, most nearly described as an everything but the kitchen sink plus red pepper sandwich”.

In the early 1950s, the English spelling crystallized as falafel.

Falafel mixed include such diverse ingredients as wheat germ and split peas in addition to the standard garbanzo beans, Everything is ground and seasoned with dried onion, garlic, herbs and spices , among which cumin and turmeric usually predominate.
What is falafel?

History of Sugar

History of Sugar
Sugarcane cultivation and sugar refining were practiced in India, Arabia and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages, apparently spread from a point of origin in northeastern India though the Muslim world.

By the time of the discovery of the Americas in the late 15th century, sugarcane cultivation had already spread to the Canary Islands.

Columbus and other early explorers of the Caribbean recognized that the climate weather was ideal for sugarcane cultivation and Columbus brought the first sugarcane from the Canary Islands to Santo Domingo in 1493.

The first sugar mill in the Western Hemisphere was built there in 1509, and by 1511, sugarcane was being harvested in Cuba. It spread rapidly to the other islands and to Mexico and Brazil.

The estates granted to Hernan Cortes in Mexico after his conquest there in 1524 were largely devoted to sugarcane production.

The Africa slaves trade stimulated a need for products that the European could barter for slaves in Africa which included distilled spirits.

Rum could be made from molasses, one of the by products of the sugar refining process.

The sugar and rums became essential parts of the triangular trades that brought millions of Africans to the New World over the 300 years from about 1520 to about 1820. Since reducing the sugarcane to raw sugar and molasses required a heating process the island regions were soon denuded of firewood.

Planters would crush the sugarcane to separate the fibers in heavy roller mills usually powered by draft animals or slaves.

The crush cane would be rinsed repeatedly with water to extract the sugar juices. After the exhaustion of firewood, planters used the fibrous remains of the canes, called bagasse, as fuel for the crude boiling pits to crystallize the raw sugar.

By the 1600s, the refining process had been separated from the plantations. Raw sugar was shipped to refineries in Lisbon Marseilles, London and Amsterdam and later to New York and other cities in colonies North America.

The history traced that the industrialization to Europe and the northern American colonies to the place in the sugar induced triangular trade and the reduction of the Caribbean region to a plantation economy based on cheap labor to the same factor.

When France became isolated from its sugarcane colonies following the French revolution, the loss of Haiti (the French part of the island of Santo Domingo) to a slave-led revolution led the French to begin sugar beet production.

The process of refining sugar from beets had been develop in about 1750 by German chemist Andreas Margraf.

A small sugarcane plantation economy developed in Louisiana Territory between 1750 and 1800 and remained in place after the purchase of that territory by the United States in 1803.
History of Sugar

Early food flavor before 19th century

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail to find seasoning. Today the influence of flavor in the world market place is no loess decisive. The rise and fall of corporate empires – of soft drinks companies, snack food companies and fast food chains - is frequently determined by how their products taste.

During the early days of history, people used mainly herbs and spices (whole or ground) to impart flavor to , or modify the flavor of, foods. It is to make food more appetizing, first by using spices and herbs and then by the extraction of fruits and aromatic plants during Middle Ages or distillation of essential oils.

The latter were predominantly used by pharmacists, and it was not until the 19th century that some people found out that essential oils can be used to impart flavor to foods.

It is believed that people began the practice of adding flavor to foods by marinating or soaking them in seasoned and salted liquid between the mid-1600s and the mid–1700s.

In the second half of the 19th century, chemists began to realize the flavoring potential of some synthetic chemicals e.g. vanillin.

Wohler and Liebig synthesized benzaldehyde in 1830 and this substance was identified in 1932 by Robiquet an Boutron-Charlard to be responsible for the odor of bitter almonds.

Thus was born the flavor industry around the middles of the 19th century.
Early food flavor before 19th century

The Legend of Coffee

The Legend of Coffee
Over the centuries numerous legends have accumulated about the discovery of coffee. Possibly the earliest references to the use of coffee are to be seen in the Old Testament.

Although cultivation may have begun as early as the 6th century C.E., the first written mention of coffee as such by Razes 10th century Arabian physician.

The most well story of the discovery of the coffee plant is concerned with a goatherd tending his flock in the hills around a monastery on the banks of the Red Sea. He noticed that his goats, after chewing berries from bushes growing there started prancing excitedly.

A monk from monastery observed these behavior, took some of the berries, roasted them, and brewed them.

When served, the brew kept his people more alert during the long prayers at night. And this saw the birth of the world’s most stimulating beverage.

The word coffee is derived from the Arabic word ‘quahweh’, which is a poetic term for “wine.” Since wine is forbidden to devout Muslims, the name was change to coffee.

The wild coffee plant is indigenous to Ethiopia, from which it spread to Arabia and nearby countries.

The transport of coffee from countries near Arabia to other parts of the world was limited; the raw beans were not allowed out of the country without steeping in boiling water or heating to destroy their germinating power.

Strangers were not allowed to visit the plantations; it was Baba Budan, a pilgrim from India, who smuggled out a few seeds capable of germination. He planted the seeds in western Ghats of Coorg in South India around 1600 C.E.

The cultivation was expanded during British rule. In Brazil, coffee entered through a Brazilian officer who, while on a visit to French Guyana in 1727, received a plant hidden in a bouquet of flowers as a token of affection from Governor’s wife.

The coffee pant belongs to the Rubiaceae family, which has over 70 species of coffee. But only seven of them have significant economic importance.

The commercially cultivated species are Arabica (Coffea arabica) and robusta (Coffea canephora).

Coffea liberica, another species was devastated during the 1940s by an epidemic of tracheamycosis due to infection by Fusarium xylaroides and the commercial growth of this species has effectively ceased since then.

Coffea robusta, which is noted for its resistance to disease contains more caffeine than Coffea arabica and is thus more economical in the manufacture of instant coffee.

Coffee is one of the most important agricultural products trade worldwide. It is grown and exported by over 70 developing countries in the tropical and subtropical belt, but industrialized countries import and consume most of it.

Of these 70, 51 countries including Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, India and Mexico are responsible for more than 88% of world output and are exporting members of the International Coffee Agreement.
The Legend of Coffee

Muffin

Muffin
The derivation of the word muffin comes from the French word moufflet which is often times applied to bread and means soft.

The two main types of muffins are: English muffins and American style muffins. They vary in style as well as flavor and history.

English muffins are a flat yeast raised muffin with nooks and crannies that are cooked on a hot griddle.

English muffin history dates all the way back to the 10th and 11th centuries in Wales. Early English muffins were cooked in muffin rings which were hooplike and placed directly on a stove or the bottom of a skillet. American style muffins on the other hand are more of a quick bread that is made in individual molds.

The molds are necessary due to the mixture being a batter rather than dough. These muffins were originally leavened with potash which produces carbon dioxide gas in the batter.

When baking powder was developed around 1857 it put an end to the use of potash as well as to the profitable potash exports to the old country.
Muffin

Vitamin A in History

Vitamin A in History
Probably the first nutritional deficiency to be clearly recognized was night blindness. The ancient Egyptians, as indicated in the Papyrus Ebers and later in the London Medical Papyrus, recommended that juice squeezed from cooked liver topically applied to the eye to cure night blindness.

This writings date from 1500 BC, but the observations probably are of much earlier origin. The Greeks, who depended heavily on Egyptian medicine, recommended both the ingestion of cooked liver and its topical application as a cure for night blindness, a tradition that has persisted in many societies to his day.

Although interesting references to vitamin A deficiency and their cure can be found throughout history, the modern science of nutrition is only about a century old. The observation that experimental animals lose weight and die on purified diets was noted by many investigations toward the end of the nineteenth century.

In the early part of this century, specific factors necessary for growth and survival were beginning to be identified. Frederick Gowland Hopkins in England, for example, during the period 1906-1912 found that a growth stimulating principle from milk was present in an alcoholic extract of milk rather than in the ash.

During the same period, Stepp in Germany identified one of these “minimal quantitative factors” as a lipid. Soon thereafter, E. V. McCollum and Marquerite Davis in Wisconsin showed that butter or egg yolk, but not lard, contained a lipid soluble factor necessary for the growth of rats. In 1913 they coined the term “fat soluble A” and thereby attributed for the first time the growth stimulating property of these extracts to a single compound.

Approaching the problem is a very different way, Osborne and Mendel at Yale concomitantly found that cod liver oil or butter was an essential growth-promoting food for rats. The year 1913, therefore, was the beginning of the modern age of vitamin A exploration.
Vitamin A in History

History of Food Science

History of Food Science
Food is any substance normally eaten or drunk by living organisms. The term food also includes liquid drinks. Food is the main source of energy and of nutrition for animals, and is usually of animal or plant origin. The beginning of food science development is questionable.

The term of food science is referred to interdisciplinary field that evolved first from chemistry, then microbiology, physics, engineering, psychology, genetics, biotechnology and law have become integral parts of this fascinating profession.

The history told us Roman realized, more than Greeks, Egyptians, or any other prior civilizations, that the agriculture was a prime concern for government.

The Romans were able to preserve a variety of foods by holding them in vinegar, honey or pitch. Some foods were dried either by sun or over the fire. These civilizations also produced cheeses or wine.

Food science became a legitimates profession following World War II. Prior to that, the vast majority of food is in the world were prepared locally and so consumers had no option but to visit butchers, bakeries, dairies, green grocers and other purveyors close to their homes and purchase mainly unbranded goods of questionable quality.

Technologies developed in the early and middle 20th century allowed the manufacturer and distribution of canned food, chilled and frozen foods and furnished consumers with electric driven refrigerators and freezers.
History of Food Science
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