Interdisciplinary progress in developing knowledge of the nature of sweet, salt, sour and bitter tastes has advanced markedly in recent years, but the subject has also become muddled with apparent inter- and intra-disciplinary enigmas and contradictions. By treating taste as a sensory response elicited at the outset by chemical recognition reactions and by application of chemical principles, the enigmas and contradictions disappear. Among them are the varying taste of mirror-image compounds (enantiomers) and the chemical nature and topological features of the receptor(s) for the four primary tastes. In the text, chemical principles (laws of definite proportion and chemical equivalency, mass action, chemical equilibria, symmetry point group theory, chirality and thermodynamics) are applied to the induction phase of the sweet, salty, sour and bitter sensations in order to derive better understanding of it. Due to economic importance and the large number of scientific studies towards sugars and other sweeteners, the major proportion of the text of the text is concerned with sweetness.
The common chemical units for the different tastes, regardless of chemical class, the chemical mechanisms responsible for them and the probably stereochemical nature of the receptor(s)for them are also presented. The text begins with a prologue to describe the problems associated with the study of taste chemistry. A series of chapters then present and discuss chemical principles, the structure and properties of compounds that elicit various tastes, the common chemical features associated with each taste, and the probable chemical mechanism(s) for them. The role that symmetry, chirality, and topology have in taste chemistry is included, as is the chemical nature of taste receptors. An epilogue presents the extent to which problems associated with comprehension of taste are resolved by application of chemical principles and there is a glossary with definitions of stereochemical, taste and other terms. The text is supported with numerous chemical structures, diagrams or graphs and tables of essential data.
For the academic area, the book is directed toward chemists, biochemists and pharmacologists with an interest in structure-activity relations and also to psychologists and neurophysiologists. For the applied area, it is directed toward sugar and sweetener scientists, basic food scientists, taste and flavour specialists and to food scientists and technologists in all fields.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Elsevier Science & Technology
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Für Beruf und Forschung
Illustrationen
Maße
ISBN-13
978-1-85166-880-9 (9781851668809)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Part 1 Chemical nature of taste: general nature of taste; taste measurement; psychological principles; transduction; overview of the tase chemicals; chemical interrelations among the four tastes. Part 2 Taste chemistry principles: chemical equivalents; water solubility and reactions in water; pH, pK, and total acidity; mass action and chemical equilibria; chemical kinetics; thermodynamics; nature of chemical bonds and chemical reactions; inductive and resonance effects; isosteric groups; structure-activity theory; symmetry and chirality; recognition chemistry. Part 3 Water and inorganic compounds: water; alkali metal and halogen salts; lead and beryllium salts; taste of salts; inorganic acids; sourness of inorganic acids. Part 4 Polyhydroxy alcohols, cyclitols and carbonyl compounds: acyclic polyhydroxy alcohols; cyclic sugar alcohols; cyclitols; hydroxy carbonyl compounds. Part 5 Structure reactions and properties of sugar: simple sugars (monosaccharides); oligosaccharides; reactions of sugars; properties of sugars. Part 6 Sweetness and other taste attributes of the sugars: intrinsic sweetness of sugars; relative sweetness of sugars; effect of concentration of relative sweetness; reactions affecting relative sweetness; relation between structure and taste in the sugar series; supplemental food attributes of sugars. Part 7 Amino acids, peptides and proteins: structure classification, and properties of amino acids; peptides and proteins; taste of amino acids; taste of peptides; taste of proteins. Part 8 Organic compounds: sweet organic substances; bitter organic substances; sour and salty organic substances. Part 9 The common sapourous units for taste: the common acidphore; the common halophore; the search for the common glycophore; the picrophore(s). Part 10 The intial chemistry of taste: initial chemistry of sourness; initial chemistry of saltiness; initial chemistry of sweetness; special qualitative aspects of the initial chemistry of sweetness; initial chemistry of bitterness; structure-activity relationships; kinetic theory; mechanism(s) of taste inhibition; recognition chemistry versus binding affinity. Part 11 Symmetry, chirality and topology in taste: symmetry in taste; chirality in taste; chirality plus topology in taste; topology in taste; symmetry, chirality and topology in retrospect. Part 12 The taste receptor(s): the taste cell membrane; protein nature of the receptor(s); meaning of the term different receptor(s); single and/or multiple receptors for each basic taste; single and/or multiple receptors within each basic taste; generic receptor model for taste.