Overview of Food Chemistry

Abstract

Among the different branches of food science, food chemistry focuses on the changes in the composition and chemical, physical, and functional properties of foods and food products during their different processing stages and storage periods. Food chemistry has rapid development in the past few decades based on modern chemistry and biochemistry. Its recent advances are mainly in the chemical aspects of food components and additives in the areas related to food quality and safety. The future development of food chemistry will be expanded into the field of functional foods and nutraceutical. Definition and Importance of Food Chemistry Foods may be defined as natural products, fresh or processed, which are consumed by human beings for their nourishment. Foods are composed of various chemical constituents including mainly carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. All these chemical constituents when acting alone or when interacting with others play an important role for the changes of the physical and chemical properties of foods and food products during their production, handling, processing, storage, and distribution. The science of food therefore studies all these properties in foods. Food science is a discipline in which biology, physical sciences, and engineering are used to study the nature of foods, the causes of their deterioration, and the principles underlying food processing. Food science is thus a multidisciplinary subject which involves chemistry, microbiology, biology, engineering, as well as biotechnology, and all these different fields are interrelated. Chemistry is the science of the composition of matter and the changes in composition that occur under changing conditions (Ira 1976). The developments in various branches of chemistry such as organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, and physical chemistry were considered as essential to the advances of food chemistry (Meyer 2004). Food chemistry is one of the major disciplines of food science which is mainly focusing on changes in the composition and chemical, physical, and functional properties of foods and food products during various stages from farm to fork. Such changes would ultimately affect the quality attributes and sensory characteristics of foods as well as the safety aspect. Therefore, the application of food chemistry mainly focuses on improving food quality and safety for the consumers. Thorough knowledge of chemistry, biochemistry, botany, zoology, physiology, and molecular biology is the key criteria to understand the food chemistry. Food chemistry does not only concern with the composition of food raw materials and end products but also with the desirable and undesirable reactions which are controlled by a variety of physical and chemical parameters. There are extensive studies on the chemical composition of foods, micronutrients, contaminants, and additives as well as mechanisms of *Email: bhavbhuti5@yahoo.co.in *Email: bhavbhutimehta@gmail.com Handbook of Food Chemistry DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-41609-5_34-1 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014