Summer SAVY 2017, Session 2/Day 2- Food Chemistry (Rising 4th/5th)

Posted by morganr1 on Tuesday, June 20, 2017 in SAVY.

Today in Food Chemistry we continued our discussion of carbohydrates and students read a case study and played the role of Medical Intern as they figured out a diagnosis of a person with an enzyme deficiency. The enzyme deficiency caused a problem in the patient’s ability to metabolize glucose into pyruvate (a process called glycolysis). We learned what the molecules associated with energy look like (glucose converts into pyruvate and inserts an energy molecule called ATP or adenosine triphosphate) and why they react in the way that they do. The students correctly diagnosed the patient who had a defective pyruvate kinase enzyme!

In the afternoon we switched gears a little bit and learned about another macromolecule in our food: lipids. We learned the chemical structure of fatty acids (unsaturated vs. saturated) and we talked about healthy vs. unhealthy fats. We did a lab procedure where we used ethanol and acetone to extract lipids from various foods that we eat regularly. When we come back in the morning we are going to learn how to quantify our results and determine exactly how much lipid we extracted from the food. We can then look at the nutrition label to see what percent of the total fat we extracted.

Tomorrow we move on to the next food molecule: protein!

Dr. LaPointe