What's in our Food?!
- RRHS ScienceNHS
- Apr 3, 2024
- 1 min read
By: Eesha Vykunta
Think about the last time you had a slice of bread. Or maybe a bowl of yogurt…
Little do people know, there are millions of microorganisms in each bite of your food, with bread and yogurt having a particularly high amount.
Bread is typically made by using yeast, flour, water, sugar, and other ingredients. Yeast, as sold in the grocery store, is filled with deactivated microorganisms. The moment you combine yeast with water and sugar, it comes to life. The bubbles in your bread are actually from the yeast organisms eating sugar, digesting it, and expelling gas, specifically carbon dioxide.
This is also why bread is notoriously hard to make. The yeast organisms are living organisms that can tolerate a wide range of conditions. If the water is too hot or cold, or if there is not enough sugar, the yeast will die and your bread will not form.
Similarly, yogurt which is made from milk has many microorganisms. The sour taste that one gets from yogurt is not because of the manufacturing process, but instead, it is because millions of little bacteria create a substance called lactic acid. This lactic acid is present in such high amounts that it makes our yogurt taste sour and acidic. This acid is also what makes the milk coagulate (clump together) and make yogurt.
So then next time you take a bite of food or decide to make dinner that night, think about all the little organisms in your food that are giving you a hand.
If you would like to know more:
I found it very interesting to see the connection between yogurts slightly sour taste, and the fact that it comes from the bacteria actively making acid inside the milk, and that the acid also makes the milk into yogurt. I'm not much of a baker, so I didn't know that there was such a huge connection between baking to the chemistry of baking, and the chemistry of baking to the biology of how the food's made aside from just the fact that food starts out as animals or plants.
As someone who likes to bake often, this was a very fascinating topic to read and I got to learn more insight about the scientific aspect of what goes on when making bread. Specifically, the part mentioned about the creation of bubbles in bread caught my attention the most. It made more sense how it was created as a result of expelling carbon dioxide after consuming the sugar.
This was a very interesting topic to learn about! Usually my dad makes our bread at home so now I know exactly what is going on through the microorganisms present. I had no idea that the bubbles in bread were from yeast organisms eating sugar, digesting it, and expelling carbon dioxide! This article gave me a sense of how much microorganisms are capable of and how even though we can't see it with the naked eye, they contribute to the world in many different ways.
This is such an interesting topic. I especially likes how you connected yeast and bacteria to something people experience daily like bread rising and the sour taste of yogurt. It does a great job of showing how science is constantly at work in the foods we war, even when we don't realize it.
This was fascinating to read! I knew that bread and yogurt contained microorganisms, but I didn't know the details, like that bread bubbles are from yeast organisms, or that lactic acid fermentation occurs in yogurt. This article gives me perspective on how much microorganisms impact our day-to-day lives, even if we don't realize it.