Teacher: Laura Di Renzo
Aims: To study all aspects of food, from harvesting and producing to cooking and consumption.
To provide information for safety, ways to produce food and food effects on human health: food chemistry and analysis, food preservation and packaging, food technology, food effects on human health.
Program: Food composition (food chemistry); food additives (vitamins, preservatives, colour, flavour); stability (shelf life, microbiology); food safety (contaminants, food poisoning); and the sensory properties of food (taste, appearance, smell, texture); food effects on human health. Foods: main composition in terms of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Food energy as calories. Food safety and food security: Nutrient and Hazard analysis and critical control point. Microbial, chemical and physical hazard. Chemical preservatives. Dimethoate and Glyphosate. Foods and their conservation. The mechanism of alteration. Water activity: the role of water in food conservation. pH and Temperature control.
The peroxidation process.
The bioactive compound of the Mediterranean Diet. The Mediterranean Adequacy Index. The Nutritional Quality Indexes. Nutraceuticals: composition and effects on human health (olive oil, butter, hydrogenated fats, wine, tomato,nut (hazelnut and chestnut), avocado, acaji, chilly pepper, cocoa, tea, green coffe, ginger, ananas, sea buckthorn, garlic)
Western Diet and dependence; sugar, salt and fat.
Microbiota and role of probiotics.
Fibers in foods. Starch and cellulose. Amilose and amilopectin. Structure and hydration properties. The browning of foods and the Maillard reaction: Enzymatic browning. Browning by caramelization. The Maillard reaction. The Amadori products. The reaction mechanism. Nutritional consequences of the Maillard reaction. The melanoidins.
Aromatic amines from roasted meat and their mutagenicity.
Ames test. Acrolein production in deep frying. Acrylamide in potatoes.Additives: gelificants, thickeners and emulsifiers. Natural or synthetic sweeteners. The supercritic viscosity (ketchup). Emulsions and foams and their evolution upon time.
