Chemistry of Food and cooking

Reflection questions

a. How can food’s energy content, nutrition, texture, taste ect. Be explained in terms of the
atomic, molecular and macromolecular structure of the food?

There is a lot of chemistry in food when you are cooking or baking. The taste might change after
baking it, or the texture might be different after cooking it. Meat is a really good food source,
because it has a lot of proteins, fats, vitamins etc., which are making meat very rich on energy. The
red color in meat comes from a compound within the muscle fibers, called myoglobin. The
myoglobin becomes oxygenated, when it comes into contact with oxygen, which makes the meat
turn bright red. When the meat is wrapped into cellophane, the meat will absorb all the oxygen in
the package, this will make the bond with oxygen break, and we call this oxidized meat. Oxidized
meat will have a more brown color, and the color change also happens when the meat is in
contact with heat.

b. How does cooking transform food and how can these transforms be understood as
chemical processes?

There is a lot of transforms when you are cooking, for example when you are baking, here the
food transforms when it is exposed to the heat, or if you are mixing two different foods together.
And if you for example boil vegetables, some of the nutrients will dissolve, you can see that by the
steam in the air. A chemical process is when a bond are broken and reformed, so it’s the bond
between the atoms that can be broken, and reformed into a compound, and a new product is
made.