Food Chemistry and Biochemistry

The goal of this course is to enable students to understand foods as mechanistic, chemical systems. All the phenomena observed in preparing food can, in principle, be understood in classically chemical terms. Understanding how chemical and biochemical systems behave enables us to better control them to meet our many needs. Students will enter the class with a basic knowledge of chemistry and leave understanding how it applies to food. As well as understanding the important chemical and biochemical basis of food quality, successful students will develop a conceptual framework to understand unfamiliar phenomena in terms of food chemistry and biochemistry. Achievement of these goals requires both an accumulation of facts and the development of an analytical approach to food quality.