LOVE LOVEFOOD SCIENCE 03: ENZYMES AT WORK LOVE FOOD LOVE SCIENCE: Enzymes at work What you need: • a slice of white bread • a mouth to put it in What to do: Take half of the slice of bread and chew it, chew it some more, keep on chewing it! Chew it until it becomes disgusting mush – don’t swallow or you’ll spoil the experiment • Note how the flavour of the bread changes as you’re chewing it • Once you think you have the answer, you can spit out the bread (or swallow it, whatever you prefer!) 03 What you may notice: As you chew the bread, it tastes sweeter

The science behind it all: Bread is mostly made up of digested. Your saliva contains an starch, a molecule made up of enzyme called amylase which long chains of glucose (sugar). cuts up starch into smaller pieces. Plants use starch to store energy. Starch doesn’t taste sweet Digestion is the chemical process but the small pieces broken of breaking down large molecules down from it do. These small into smaller ones that can be sugar molecules (glucose and used by the cells. Before starch maltose) are responsible for can be of use to cells, it must be that sweet taste.

Beyond the science: Enzymes are commonly of the most commonly used high-fructose corn syrup, a to produce corn starch. used for industrial purposes, industrial enzymes. Scientists popular ingredient that can α-amylase is then added to in anything from laundry use the bacterium Bacillus be found in many products, break down the corn starch detergent to contact lens licheniformis to produce particularly fizzy drinks and into smaller chains of glucose. solutions to food production amylase on an industrial fruit drinks. The production It is the first of three enzymes – they are even used to clean scale. Alpha (α)-amylase is of high fructose corn syrup used to produce high-fructose up oil spills! Amylase is one used in the production of begins with corn (surprise!) corn syrup.