Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Lactose if one of the major components of milk, and plays a crucial role in human development. This paper will examine the structure, function, physical properties, chemical properties, reactions, and everyday uses of lactose. In addition, a discussion of the common issue of lactose intolerance in humans is included.
A natural sugar found in milk, lactose is likely one of the most commonly identifiable of all milk ingredients (except perhaps calcium). Lactose makes up to 4.8 to 5.2% of milk, and 70% of the whey solids in milk.
Other carbohydrates in milk are present in small amounts, including glucose, galactose, and oligosaccharides. Milk also contains a number of other components, including water, milk lipids (which make up products like butter), and milk proteins like caseans and whey proteins (which are predominantly present in milk solids like cheese), milk enzymes (including lipoprotein lipase, plasmin, and alkaline phosphatase), and vitamins (B1 - thiamine, B2 - riboflavin, B6 - pyridoxine, B12 - cyanocobalamin, niacin, pantothenic acid), All 22 minerals essential to the human diet are found in milk, including sodium, chloride, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, nickel, manganese, zinc, copper, and even silicon and tin (University of Guelph).
Lactose is not found within plant sources, and is less sweet than many other sugars, including sucrose. Lactose is only found within milk, which is produced by lactating mammals, including humans, for the nourishment of their offspring....
Milk is produced within animal mammary glands (Thelwall), and is the primary carbohydrate within milk in most animal species (Hurley).
In Western society, lactose (within milk) is used within a wide variety of milk products. Cheeses, cottage cheese, sour cream, and yogurts are milk products. In addition, milk is used in a wide variety of other food products, including breads, pizzas, ice cream products, and even cereals (Martens). The use of lactose as a fermentation product is an important component of the use of lactose in food products. Lactic acid bacteria make lactic acid from lactose, which acts as the basis of many fermented dairy products, such as sour cream and yoghurt (University of Guelph).
The souring of milk comes from a chemical reaction that occurs to the lactose molecule that is closely related to the fermentation process noted earlier. In common experience, soured milk tastes less sweet than fresh milk, reflecting the breakdown of lactose. When milk sours, lactose within the milk is converted to lactic acid by bacteria in the milk, thus reducing the sweetness of milk, and creating the off-putting acidic odor and taste that characterize lactic acid (Thelwall).
Lactose is a relatively insoluble molecule (University of Guelph). As such, this insolubility can often be a problem within the production and storage of many milk products including ice cream.
In structure, lactose is a white crystalline disaccharide that is comprised of two…
Works Cited
Hurley, W.L. Lactose Synthesis. Lactation Biology.
07 May 2004. http://classes.aces.uiuc.edu/AnSci308/lactosesynthesis.html
Martens, Sherlyn. 1987. The Milk Sugar Dilemma: Living with Lactose Intolerance. Medi-Ed Pr.
Miller, Dennis. 1998. Food Chemistry: A Laboratory Manual. Wiley-Interscience.
University of Guelph. Dairy Chemistry and Physics. 07 May 2004. http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/chem.html
Poultry Milk from the cow is one of the most versatile and important substances in the human diet as well as in the diets of many animals and in particular in the diet of poultry that are being raised as layers, broilers or for other purposes. The fact that this milk can be processed into many different forms adds to its versatility and provides a wide array of by-products from which
Chemistry When it comes to nutrition, terms like carbohydrate, lipid, monosaccharide, protein and cholesterol can sound almost like a foreign language. With all the conflicting reports of what affects your body and what does harm, it is no wonder that people are so confused. Yet the importance of these substances is so vital that by understanding what these things are, as well as how they are used by our bodies can
Enzymes are highly selective and substrate-specific catalysts that work by lowering activation energy for reactions thus increasing the rate of metabolic reactions. In enzymatic reactions, substrates are molecules binding onto enzymes' active sites to form enzyme-substrate complexes (Cornish-Bowden, 2004). Lactose is a disaccharide sugar commonly found in milk and lactase is the enzyme responsible for catalyzing lactose into its subsequent monosaccharide products; glucose and galactose. In line with this, lactose
Health Care Provider and Faith Diversity Spirituality In Health Care HLT-310V-0104 EMORY DAVIS Mr. Saracouli, your paper addresses the 3 diverse faiths and identifies some of their components of care and healing. These could be developed more. This will give greater opportunity to discuss more specific comparisons and contrasts of these components with those of Christianity, which is a significantly key element of this assignment (as highlighted in the Mod 2 Assignment Assist and
This increased their word of mouth advertising and eventually led to a very large order from a grocery chain, Fresh Market. This word of mouth marketing helped expand their distribution channels as well. The greatest opportunity for a small business, like Sweet Grass, is to focus on what they do best and serve a niche market. Sweet Grass isn't trying to be the largest dairy producer, with an all-encompassing product
The study that covered the topic most thoroughly was the one by Saavedra, J.M. (2001), which covered not only the present situation with probiotics, but also looked at such topics as intestinal flora, lactose malabsorption, diarrhea, bacteria vs. viruses, atopic disease, and clinical safety and tolerance. In order to better understand the place that probiotics has in today's modern-day society, it is worthwhile to have a background such as the