Chemistry reveals the "color and flavor" in food!

The color of food is mostly human-colored, with food coloring added during production. There are also foods that are colored because they contain some kind of natural pigment. For example, the green color of vegetable stems and leavesbinmei and unripe fruits is chlorophyll, the red color of tomatoes is tomato pigment, shrimp and crab shells contain mayonnaise red pigment, which can show red when heated.

The flavor of food comes from aldehydes, aldehydes, ketones, lipids and other volatile substances. Fish, meat, eggs are rich in protein, protein itself does not have a fresh flavor, but after cooking, hydrolysis into a variety of amino acids, amino acids have a fresh flavor. Among the amino acids, the taste of glutamic acid is the most delicious. The "chicken essence" is the sodium salt of glutamic acid. Cane sugar diluted to 200 times with water, you can not feel the sweetness, but chicken essence diluted to 3000 times with water, you can still taste the fresh flavor! Recently, a powerful chicken essence made spirulina concentrateof sodium glutamate mixed with sodium inosinate has been developed, and its freshness is 40 times that of monosodium glutamate. Shrimps, crabs, snails and clams contain a lot of succinic acid in their bodies, so they have a unique fresh aroma that is favored by people. The fragrance of cinnamon is due to the presence of cinnamaldehyde, and the fragrance of currant wine comes from the miscellaneous alcohols and lipids produced in the hair alcohol. The fragrance of banana is the evaporation of isoamyl acetate, and the fragrance of citrus comes from the nerolidol contained. For snacks and sugar cubes, the aroma is due to the addition of artificial fruit flavors.

In China, it is customary to classify flavors into sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty "five flavors".

The sour taste is caused by hydrogen ions from hydrolysis of various organic substances, and the strength of sour taste is determined by the size of hydrogen ion concentration. Vinegar contains about 3-5% of acetic acid, kimchi contains lactic acid, and the sourness in fruits, drinks or sugar cubes comes from the composition of citric acid, tartaric acid, malic acid and vitamin C, etc.

Sweetness is caused by sucrose, fructose, glucose, maltose, lactose and other sugar substances. When making pastries, cookies, popsicles, ice cream, but also often add the right amount of saccharin to enhance the sugar level. The chemical name of saccharin is o-sulfonyl benzoyl imide, which is about 500 times more sugar than white sugar, but it has no nutritional content and can only stimulate the appetite of people.

Most of the substances containing flavonoids possess a bitter taste, like yellow, can, etc. Tea contains 5% caffeine, the stronger the tea, the more bitter its taste.

Chili pepper contains capsaicin, small onion, garlic contains allicin, ginger slices contain ginger oil ketone, mustard and radish spicy taste from mustard oil, pepper contains piperine.

As anyone knows, salt is salty and has a salt taste when the compound contains both monovalent positive ions and cations of monovalent acids. For example, potassium, sodium fluoride, bromide, iodide, etc. For patients with kidney disease who cannot eat salt, sodium malate, which also produces a salt taste, can be consumed instead.

In addition to these "five flavors", there is spirulina powder bluealso a taste, which is astringent, some fruits such as persimmons and plums have astringent taste due to the presence of tannin.

In short, the taste is the food contains substances on the taste nerve chemical - physical stimulation effect, caused by the different sensations.