Chemistry

The course provides an increased understanding of the chemical reactions that take place in all living cells, focusing on understanding the enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions and how they are regulated. The metabolism of the cell is described in different sections of the course to understand how energy is made available through certain chemical reactions, that are used to power other chemical reactions. The lab part of the course consists of one lab where an enzyme is purified and characterized and a computer lab where students learn to use different basic bioinformatic tools.

This course is an introduction to the chemistry of foods, specifically the chemistry of groups of compounds present in food: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, phenolic compounds, and enzymes. Students learn about the chemical changes that take place during storage and processing of agricultural crops and food. In addition, during the laboratory classes, students learn about the design of experiments and the analysis of the composition of food products. Food technologists should be able to estimate the relevance of various chemical and enzymatic processes by making calculations. To gain experience with this part of food chemistry, students practice the quantification of specific reactions in calculation cases. After successful completion of this course, students are able to recognize the molecular structures of the most common food components and their reaction products; recognize and understand the generic functional and chemical properties of the most common food components; understand the chemical reactions occurring during food processing; understand how reactive groups of food components play an important role in chemical reactions; describe the influence of processing conditions on chemical reaction and on the properties of food components; describe the effect of chemical reactions on the characteristics of food in a qualitative sense; apply generic mathematical concepts on experimental data to make quantitative judgments of the effect of reactions on the quality of food; choose between the most common analytical methods and techniques to analyze specific food compounds; and conduct experiments to analyze the effect of processing on food compounds and be able to interpret and report on the results of these experiments.

This course advances the concepts of the chemical reactivity of carbonyl and aromatic compounds with a specific emphasis placed on gaining an understanding of their different modes of reaction. It includes numerous examples of the application of the described chemistry to the making of complex chemical entities. The laboratory sessions complement the material covered in lectures.