The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to food chemistry and to the production technologies of some commonly used foods of great industrial and economic importance. In particular the student will be able to 1) Know the chemical and technological properties of the three main macronutrients of which food is composed: carbohydrates, fats and proteins, with particular attention to the aspects linked to the transformations that occur when cooking foods. 2) Know the chemical and technological processes that take place during the industrial transformation of foods such as sugar, butter, the main edible oils and flour. 3) Know the main chemical reactions that take place during the transformation of a food, both thermal and chemical. 4) Apply the knowledge to understand how the components of a food interact with each other during the transformations that occur during cooking or in the composition of a recipe.
Course Prerequisites
In order to understand the topics covered in the course, some knowledge of organic chemistry is needed for the part dedicated to sugars and lipids, and the fundamentals of biochemistry for the part concerning proteins.
Teaching Methods
The 6 CFU course corresponds to 48 hours of lectures. All the lessons are supported by slides prepared by the teacher and distributed in advance to the students so that they can integrate the material with their notes taken in class. Some lessons / demonstrations are also planned, possibly with the active participation of the students, on the organoleptic properties of some sugars with blinded tests.
Assessment Methods
The exam is divided into two parts. The first part consists of a questionnaire of multiple choice questions (4 possible choices) that cover all the topics of the course. 30-45 minutes are required for this test. The second part consists of an oral presentation with support of slides on a topic chosen by the student, and approved in advance by the teacher, on a topic concerning the topics of the course. In the presentation the student will have to deepen, in a manner consistent with the objectives of the course, a theme linked to a specific food or a food class or to a particular class of molecules of food interest. The suggested length of the presentation is about 15 minutes. The final grade is a weighted average of the two tests.
Contents
General introduction to food chemistry. Classification of carbohydrates. Origin and biological functions. Functional properties of sugars. The various commercial types of sucrose. Fats and their biological function. Classification of fatty acids. Composition of some vegetable and animal fats. Butter, milk, Proteins, their biological role, primary, secondary and tertiary structure, denaturation and coagulation. Functional properties of proteins for gastronomic use, cooking of meat, collagen, important enzymes in gastronomic preparations, the egg. Polysaccharides. Starches and their properties. Amylose and amylopectin. Functional properties. Flour. The chocolate.
