Food Chemistry

• The history of Food Chemistry was discussed by Jeffrey M. Ostanal, an Assistant Professor IV FT 17 Food Chemistry.
• The origins of Food Chemistry are obscure and have not been rigorously studied and recorded.
• Food Chemistry did not acquire a clear identity until the 20th century.
• Food Chemistry is entangled with that of agricultural chemistry.
• Information available is sufficient to indicate when, where, and why certain key events occurred related to changes in the wholesomeness of the food supply since the early 1800s.
• Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swedish pharmacist, discovered chlorine, glycerol, and oxygen.
• Scheele isolated and studied the properties of lactose in 1780.
• The world's largest national system of agriculture experiment stations came into existence, with a great impact on food research.
• Most of the essential dietary substances were discovered and characterized during the first half of the 20th Century, including Vitamins, minerals, FA, and AA.
• Agriculture experiment stations were established in the US following enactment of the Hatch Act, authored by Rep. William H. Hatch.
• During the middle 1900s, there was a significant development and extensive use of chemicals to aid in the growth, manufacture, and marketing of foods.
• Several current issues have replaced the historical ones in terms of what the food science community must address in further promoting the wholesomeness and nutritive value of foods today.
• Scheele prepared mucic acid by oxidation of lactic acid in 1780.
• Scheele devised a means of preserving vinegar by the application of heat in 1782.
• Scheele isolated citric, malic, and tartaric acids in 1784-1785.
• Scheele's method for preserving vinegar involved boiling the vinegar in a tin kettle for a quarter of a minute and then immediately pouring it into bottles.
• Vinegar treated this way could be stored for several years.
• The degradation of vinegar was caused by microbes, and heat treatment sterilized it.
• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, a French chemist, formulated the principles of modern chemistry and established the fundamental principles of combustion and organic analysis.
• The need to detect impurities in food was a major stimulus for the development of food chemistry.
• Advances in chemistry contributed somewhat to the adulteration of food.
• Food adulteration is the act of intentionally debasing the quality of food offered for sale either by the admixture or substitution of inferior substances or by the removal of some valuable ingredient.
• Plants are usually composed of only 7 or 8 elements, and the most essential vegetable substances consist of H, C, and O in different proportion, generally alone, but in some few cases combined with azote (N).
• Thomas Thomson showed that laws governing the composition of inorganic substances apply equally well to organic substances.
• Jons Jacob Berzelius determined the elemental components of about 2000 compounds, thereby verifying the law of definite proportions.
• Justus von Liebig conducted research on the water-soluble constituents of muscle (creatine, creatinine, sarcosine, inosinic acid, lactic acid, etc.) in his first book in Food Chemistry: Researches on the Chemistry of Food (1847).
• Justus von Liebig showed that acetaldehyde occurs as an intermediate between alcohol and acetic acid during fermentation of vinegar (1837).
• Justus von Liebig classified foods as either nitrogenous or nonnitrogenous (1842).
• Michel Eugene Chevreul listed the elements known to exist at that time in organic substances (O, Cl, I, N, S, P, C, Si, H, Al, Mg, Ca, Na, K, Mn, Fe).
• Lavoisier was the first to show that the process of fermentation could be expressed as a balanced equation.
• Nicolas Théodore de Saussure, a French chemist, formalized and clarified the principles of agricultural and food chemistry provided by Lavoisier.
• Saussure studied carbon dioxide and oxygen gas changes during plant respiration in 1804.
• Saussure studied mineral contents of plants by ashing, and made the first accurate elemental analysis of alcohol in 1807.
• Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis- Jacques Thenard, French chemists, devised the first method to determine percentages of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen in dry vegetable substances in 1811.
• Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, isolated the elements K, Na, Ba, Sr, Ca, and Mg between 1807-1808.
• In 1871, Jean Baptiste Duman suggested that a diet consisting of only protein, carbohydrate, and fat was inadequate to support life.
• The history of food adulteration spans from ancient times to about 1820, when it was not a serious problem and was handled by small businesses with interpersonal accountability.
• The situation improved gradually in the 1920s with the introduction of effective methods of detection and regulatory pressures.
• The rise of modern chemistry in the early 1800s led to an increase in intentional food adulteration and centralization of food processing and distribution.
• Harvey Washington Wiley led the campaign against misbranded and adulterated food, resulting in the Pure Food and Drug Act in the United States (1906).