Lec. 15 Sugar Flashcards
What commonly explains the absence of honey as an important part of the diet in traditional societies?
Cold Climate and absence of honey bees.
What would toxic honey fetch higher prices?
If bees collect nectar from plants that produce psychoactive toxins, some people may cherish a buzz.
How can honey consist mostly of monosaccharides when most nectar contains the disaccharide sucrose?
Bees cleave the disaccharide sucrose into glucose and fructose using an enzyme in their gut
What prevents honey from going bad?
The high concentration of sugars and low water content.
If honey is said to never go bad, how can people ferment it into mead?
Diluting the honey with water will allow yeasts to ferment it.
Why would you dilute honey in water?
When separating the wax from the honey comp from honey and grubs, boiling the remainder of the combs allows the wax to float on top and all the honey to dissolve in the water.
Sugar cane did not exist first millennium Europe. What do you expect was the sweetener of choice in early recipes from Europe?
Dried fruit and honey.
Why does the botanical name for sugar cane refer to an apothecary (medical professional) ?
Sugar was considered a medicine
How did sugar cane get to southern Spain?
The Arabs and Moors brought it there when they civilized southern Spain in the 8th century.
What do sugar and durum wheat have in common?
Both were discovered by Europeans during the early crusades in the 11th century.
What is the link between the slave revolt /successful revolution in Haiti and the United States?
It contributed to the Louisiana purchase, the transfer of large territory from France to the US.
What is pulque?
A traditional alcoholic drink in Central America made from fermented agave sap.
What is the principal sugar in agave juice?
Fructose and polyfructose (fructan).
What is the difference between harvest from agave (Maguey) for aguamiel and for the production of tequila?
Only the sap is used for aguamiel/pulque , but the whole base of the plant (pina with sap and starch) is used for making tequila.
What plant does the word maguey refer to?
Agave
Which non-human animals also enjoy palm wine?
chimpanzees and bats
What steps are required for fermenting starch from grain, tubers of fruit into alcoholic beverages?
Malting, and mashing.
What is a SCOBY?
Symbiotic Community of Bacteria and Yeast, e..g. Qu or Koji, used to directly ferment any starch in East Asia.
How is the East Asian variant of aldehyde dehydrogenase acting in a codominant manner?
One copy of the variant reduces the person’s ability to metabolize alcohol, two copies reduce it further.
How can corn starch give rise to glucose and fructose corn syrup?
By the use of enzymes that cleave the starch and change glucose into fructose
What is the link between explosives and fertilizers?
Both are based on industrial nitrogen fixation.
Why is hydrolyzed sucrose called inverted sugar?
Fructose rotates light the opposite way than sucrose does.
What is a heterodimer as seen in taste receptors?
A heterodimer is the combination of two different proteins to form a single functional unit
Why would carnivores have lost functional sweetness receptors during evolution?
Their diets do not include fruit or honey. There was no evolutionary disadvantage for mutations that inactivated the receptor proteins.
